Former Tampa Tribune Editor, Partner Killed In Crash: Police

ODESSA, FL — Janine Dorsey, a longtime editor at the former Tampa Tribune, and her partner were hit and killed by an accused impaired driver as they rode their tandem bicycle Tuesday night on an extension of the Pinellas Trail, police said.

Cory Robert Corrado, 31, of Port Richey, was arrested and charged with two counts each of DUI manslaughter (drugs) and vehicular homicide, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

Investigators said Corrado, driving a Chrysler PT Cruiser west on Keystone Road about 5:50 p.m. Tuesday, was passing other vehicles in a no-passing zone on Keystone Road near Meadows Drive when he struck the rear of a Ford Escape. The impact caused the SUV to overturn and slide off the shoulder of the road onto the bike trail, where it hit Dorsey, 50, and Peter Yore, 58, of Odessa, on their bike.

The pair suffered fatal injuries at the scene of the crash.

Corrado and the SUV driver, a 33-year-old Odessa man, suffered minor injuries, troopers told the Tampa Bay Times.

Because of Marsy's Law, police didn't release Dorsey and Yore's names as the crash victims, but friends shared the news.

Officers believe Corrado was impaired by alcohol or a drug, the newspaper said. The results of a blood test are pending.

Court records show Corrado is in the Pinellas County jail in lieu of $80,000 bail.

Two of Dorsey's closest friends knew her for 30 years and were newspaper colleagues. Michelle Bearden, former religion editor, and Kim MacCormack, former features editor at the paper, both told Patch's D'Ann Lawrence White they were shaken by their friend's death, and the news that a suspected drunken driver may have caused the crash.

MacCormack recalled her friend's fierce love for her daughters, Erin and Kelly, as well as her cats.

"There will never, ever be another Janine Dorsey. She was fierce and to the point, wicked smart and more wickedly funny, sometimes scary and always 100 percent on your side — unless it was the wrong one," MacCormack said. "I will miss our talks, the car rides, brainstorming Halloween costumes, brunch, our constant cat chatter, protests, ... everything."

Dorsey went to work at the Tribune in 1991 as a research librarian for a few years and then as website and database producer until 2016, when the paper closed the paper, according to the Times. In her later years with the company she was a producer with TBO.com, the website she helped launch at the Tampa Tribune. She also served as product manager for her then-husband, novelist Tim Dorsey, a former Tribune editor.

Dorsey loved to share her daughters' achievements, MacCormack said, "boasting about their athletic and education prowess. She loved those girls with every cell in body."

Kelly attends medical school at the University of South Florida, while Erin recently earned a master’s degree from USF, the Times said.

And former Tribune staffers will be there to help Dorsey's daughters deal with their terrible loss.

"A senseless, stupid act took Janine and her boyfriend, Peter. The Tribune family will see that through, also," MacCormack said.

Peter Yore's daughter, Victoria Yore, 28, told the Times whenever her father didn't attend college but was smart and owned successful businesses in real estate and the medical field. He was proud of what he could learn from YouTube videos and would work family and friends' cars at no charge.

“We were robbed of 30 years,” Victoria Yore told the newspaper.

Bearden said Dorsey doted on her cats, even taking them for walks in a stroller — and they will be lost without her constant attention.

Dorsey's spark as a political organizer, and also as someone who transformed herself by losing weight and getting physically fit, was something to admire.

"Associates from the Tiger Bay Club, where she worked as an event organizer, are numb with pain," Bearden said. "After the 2016 election, with many of us in despair, Janine called a meeting at her house. 'We can't just complain, girls,' she said. 'We have to DO something.'

"We all made individual vows that day to take some kind of action to turn things around in 2018 and 2020," Bearden added. "I always checked in with Janine, to let her know how that impromptu gathering triggered my newfound activism"

Last week, she helped organize a Tribune reunion at Four Green Fields to memorialize the five-year anniversary of the newspaper's closing.

"So many lives, starting with her girls, will never be the same. Keep them in your thoughts," Bearden said.