‘He flung me’: Hastings man says St. Johns County sheriff’s deputies mistook him for wanted suspect
A man is speaking out after he says a St. Johns County sheriff’s deputy mistook him for a suspect wanted on a warrant and slammed him against a wall at his own house.
“I’m scared! That man snatched me! He snatched me! He snatched the wrong person! He snatched me and pinned me up against a wall,” Dougquavius Sippio said in a video Thursday evening.
He recorded that video after he says deputies came to his house and slammed him against a wall.
He says it all started when he was heading out to take a relative to the hospital, when he saw three deputies “quickly” pull into his yard.
“When I turned around to reach for the door, he grabbed me by the hoodie – he flung me to the wall on the porch, and was like, ‘We have a warrant for Utasha.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m not Utasha, I’m a boy, I don’t know who that is,’” Sippio recalled.
An incident report by the sheriff’s office says deputies were responding to a disturbance call and looking for a woman named Utasha Christoff.
An incident report by the sheriff’s office says deputies were responding to a disturbance call and looking for a woman named Utasha Christoff.
“I said, ‘I’m not Utasha! I’m not even a girl,’” Sippio said in another video recorded Thursday night.
“They still didn’t believe us. They went on their speaker and were like, ‘Can we get a description of what Utasha looks like?’” Sippio told Action News Jax.
In the report, the deputy then walked farther down the yard to the home where the call originated on Orange Street, and was told Christoff was no longer there.
Action News Jax noted both houses have similar street numbers, that Orange and Cochran streets intersect and that the houses are next door to each other.
Sippio says he got no apology from the sheriff’s office and was left feeling shaken up.
“We didn’t get a, ‘Oh yeah, we’re sorry.’ It’s like, ‘Okay, it happened, y’all need to get over it, and we had the wrong person,’” he said.
Action News Jax reached out to the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office about the incident.
This is a developing story and will be updated if or when we get a response.
[SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter]
Click here to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Action News Jax live.
