For the third time in 10 days, Jacksonville police shot an armed suspect, this one involving a domestic battery and a 9-month-old baby, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
It began about 11:45 a.m. Thursday, May 14, with a call from a woman reporting she had been battered by her boyfriend in the 300 block of Eberly Drive near St. Johns Bluff Road and Atlantic Boulevard. Before officers arrived, the man had left the house, Chief Michael Paul said.
While they were in the process of obtaining an arrest warrant, he returned and held the woman and her 9-month-old child against her will for several hours. At one point, she was able to escape into the nearby wooded area with the baby and called 911. Her boyfriend fired a rifle into the air several times while she was hiding, Paul said.
Officers responded again and located the woman and baby in the woods at about 9:15 p.m. Her boyfriend could be heard making threats to kill her and “shoot everyone” if officers showed up, unaware police were already there. He then heard something and entered the woods and found them, pointing a handgun at the two officers who then shot him, Paul said. He was taken into custody and transported to a hospital.
“I believe that they saved a couple lives tonight,” Sheriff T.K. Waters said. “It’s a really dangerous situation, a very tense situation. He was actively walking through around looking for the victim and that child and had made statements that he was going to kill everybody if she called the police and if the police showed up. So this was a very dangerous situation when he heard a stick get stepped on, he found them, he located them and said, ‘Now I gotcha.'”
Asked if the man had mental health issues, the sheriff said no but he had been drinking throughout the day.
Paul identified him as 30-year-old Marcus Delay and said he hasn’t been in Jacksonville very long. The officers were five-year veteran G. Comayagua and four-year veteran J. Jones. It was their second and first shootings, respectively.
This was the 10th shooting by Jacksonville police this year, six of which were fatal ― both one ahead of last year’s pace that ended with 17 police shootings and 11 dead.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville police shoot 3rd armed suspect in 10 days
Reporting by Scott Butler, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
