Memorial to honor two Hernando High School teachers killed in 1996

By Tony Marrero, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Friday, January 22, 2010

BROOKSVILLE — Not long after two popular Hernando High School teachers died at the hands of a troubled teenager in the second week of 1996, their names appeared for posterity on the Michael A. Imhoff Gymnasium and the Joseph Michael Bristol Building.

But after a while, names on buildings tend to become just that, detached from the people meant to be honored.

Imhoff, 40, was head football coach and a gym instructor; Bristol, 41, chaired the math department. They were good friends and their respective teaching styles complemented each other, recalled Lorenzo Hamilton, a former school administrator who worked with both men.

On Jan. 11,1996 a bright Thursday afternoon, Bristol and Imhoff saw Jimmy Dale Smith, a 19-year-old laborer, walking along the side of Lake Lindsey Road north of Brooksville. After a car accident earlier in the day, Smith struck off into the woods carrying a rifle, a Bible and a hard hat. He hailed Imhoff and Bristol.

Smith would later tell authorities he shot Imhoff because he laughed when Smith asked for the truck. When Bristol tried to escape, Smith shot him, too. He was arrested an hour later, after a gunfight with a detective in the parking lot of a Spring Hill convenience store.

Smith pleaded guilty to both murders. Under the terms of the plea agreement, he avoided the death penalty and was instead sentenced to life in prison. Now 33, he is in the Lake Correctional Institution in Clermont.