When her school bus pulled up to her house that day, Ashley Bell spotted her mom's car in the driveway and wondered why it was there.

A 14-year-old latchkey kid, Bell usually got home before her mother Carolyn arrived from her job as a nurse at St. Joseph's Hospital. But that day, May 19, 1998, her mother was waiting for her with news that would change her life.

"I walked in and she said, 'Your dad's been shot," Bell recalls. "I said, 'Is he okay?' It didn't register that something else had happened."

About 2 p.m. that day, Tampa police Detective Randy Bell and his partner Ricky Childers had been slain in cold blood by a man now considered one of the Tampa Bay area's most notorious killers. Hank Earl Carr, a 30-year-old convicted felon who managed to escape with the help of a handcuff key around his neck, would go on to shoot a rookie Florida Highway Patrol Trooper named James "Brad" Crooks before killing himself during a standoff with police at a Hernando County gas station.

THE TRAGEDY IN PHOTOS:Hank Earl Carr went on a murderous rampage in 1998

On Saturday, the Tampa Police Department will mark the 20th anniversary of one of the region's darkest days in law enforcement history with a memorial ceremony at the department's downtown headquarters.

Ashley Bell, now a police detective in Lee County, will be there in her dark blue uniform. So will retired Tampa police Sgt. Dan Grossi, who led the homicide squad at the time and called that day the worst in his life.

"Not only were they good detectives," Grossi said, "they were family."

•••

The day that would end with five people dead began with a call about a boy shot in the head.

Carr shared an apartment at 709 E Crenshaw St. with his girlfriend, Bernice Bowen, and her two children, Joey and his sister, then 5. That day, shortly before 10 a.m., Carr and Bowen showed up at a fire station with Joey. The boy had been shot in the head. Carr said the boy had accidentally shot himself.

When paramedics pronounced Joey dead, Carr took off running, darting right in front of Childers' green Ford Taurus. Childers took him to police headquarters. Carr called himself Joseph Bennett, the name of the children's biological father, and he called Bowen his wife. In reality, he was a felon wanted in four states who was known to be violent and had said he'd rather die than go back to prison. Bowen, 24 at the time, would later say she went along with the facade at Carr's request.

On tape, Carr changed his story, telling the detectives Joey had been dragging an assault rifle by the barrel and the gun fired when Carr grabbed it to take it away. Court documents would later state that the blood spatter didn't match up with Carr's story. Whether the shooting was intentional or accidental was never known.

Childers, 46, and Bell, 44, decided to drive Carr back to the apartment where the family lived and have him walk them through the chain of events. They confiscated one of his SKS rifles and placed Carr, his hands cuffed in front of him, into the back of the Taurus for the ride back to headquarters. Childers was driving.

Carr slipped out of his handcuffs with the aid of his hidden key, reached up front and shot Childers with his own 9mm handgun. Then he shot Bell. "I shot them both in the face," Carr would later tell a radio station producer on a phone call during the standoff at the gas station. "I had to shoot one twice because I shot him and he was still trying to get the gun so I shot him again."

Tampa police would soon require that prisoners be handcuffed behind their backs.

But that day, the killing wasn't over.

Carr grabbed the rifle, hijacked a truck and sped north.

Grossi, the homicide squad leader, remembers arriving at the scene near Floribraska not knowing who was involved. He recognized Childers' green Taurus with the Miami Dolphins plate on the front bumper. The detectives' bodies were still in the car.

"That is a memory that will always be etched in my mind," said Grossi, 66, of Odessa.

Barrelling through Pasco County, Carr exchanged gunfire with Pasco deputies and shot a truck driver in the shoulder. Crooks, 23, a trooper on the job just eight months, pulled up in traffic behind Carr on the exit ramp for State Road 54. Carr got of the truck and fired into Crooks' patrol car, killing him. Speeding into Hernando County, Carr fired through a floorboard of a sheriff's helicopter before being wounded in the buttocks

He later pulled into a Shell station near the State Road 50 exit ramp on Interstate 75, firing at more than 75 police cars, and took clerk Stephanie Kramer, then 27, hostage for more than four hours.

"I hate cops,'' Carr told Kramer at one point, records show. "I meant to shoot 'em. That I will not take back.''

He let her go about 7:30 p.m. and shot himself in the head as a SWAT team stormed the gas station.

•••

Twenty years later, family and friends have carried a burden of grief that has eased, perhaps, but remained a constant companion.

With each passing year, they have celebrated milestones that they always figured the men would be around to see. High school and college graduations. The birth of their grandchildren.

"You've got to learn how to rebuild without that person in your life," said Jennifer Neal, one of Bell's sisters. "He lives within all of us, so we'll never forget, but you have to kind of move past that day."

At least some felt relieved Carr killed himself. If he'd lived, he might still be alive today, sitting on death row while his victims' loved ones endured the slow, painful grind of justice.

They cheered when Bowen was convicted of being an accessory after the fact for not telling police Carr's true identity. And they noted the headlines when, in 2016, Bowen was released from state prison after serving more than 18 years. For many, it wasn't long enough.

Neal now lives in north Georgia. She remembers her brother as a quiet man, a NASCAR fan who cooked and cleaned and went out of his way to help people. After the killings, Neal worried even more about her husband, Troy Neal, a Tampa police officer who worked the midnight shift and retired safely a few years ago. When their son, Andrew, the middle of three kids, said he wanted to be a cop, the parents tried unsuccessfully to talk him out of it. He's now a sheriff's deputy in Union County, Ga.

Neal said their mother, Barbara Setzer, is 81 and doing well, but the month of May, with Mother's Day and then the anniversary of her son's death, is probably the most painful time of the year.

Childers and Bell were both married. Bell had three daughters, a stepson, a stepdaughter and a grandson. Childers had two sons. Crooks was engaged.

Ricky Childers II, who was 23 when his father died, now has a son and stepson of his own. His brother, Glenn "Corky" Childers, is married and has a daughter. Carr stole their father's right to meet his grandchildren.

"We always make sure to talk to them about him," Ricky Childers, who has since moved from Plant City to Indianapolis and works as an insurance adjuster, said in a phone interview. "We have something set up at home celebrating his life, with mementos and pictures."

Childers said he shares the same bond with his own kids, who can blame his sense of humor and "dad jokes" on their grandfather. He told them about his memories of going with his father to air shows and car shows, where the elder Childers would sometimes display his vintage Chevy Chevelles.

Crooks grew up on his family's 2,000-acre cattle farm in Clewiston, the son of Mike and Vivian Crooks. He was friendly and wanted to be a trooper to help people, Mike Crooks said. The University of South Florida graduate wanted so badly to be a trooper that he lost more than 60 pounds to pass the police academy fitness test. His ashes are now in an urn in his parents' home, and a stretch of State Road 54 was dedicated in his honor.

Crooks said he and his wife, who died in 2007, have avoided memorial ceremonies like the one the Tampa Police Department will have today.

"We decided many years ago that all those things do is bring it all back," he said.

But for others, the memorials are a way to reunite, to mark a day that shouldn't be forgotten.

It's been 10 years since TPD had its last memorial for Childers and Bell. That was before Ashley Bell decided she wanted to be a cop and joined the Lee County Port Authority Police Department.

"For them to still appreciate what my dad and his partner did is amazing," she said, "and for me to be able to show up wearing the blue is an honor."

Contact Tony Marrero at tmarrero@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3374. Follow @tmarrerotimes.