Murky details: Law enforcement in Jacksonville shoot 2nd suspect within several hours
In less than about 16 hours, law enforcement officers in Jacksonville shot a second suspect, this one dead.
Tuesday afternoon's shooting was in a different part of town at the Circle K gas station at New Berlin Road and North Main Street than the one in the early morning involving road rage and a high-speed police pursuit across the city that ended on West Beaver Street.
A small car could be seen pinned in at a gas pump by three larger unmarked vehicles.
Sheriff T.K. Waters said detectives with his agency were part of a U.S. Marshals Service task force surveilling a sexual battery suspect wanted in South Carolina who was spotted here. One of the detectives saw a parked vehicle about 4:30 p.m. that the suspect may have been in and then saw a man coming out of a business who looked like him.
The male driver then got out of the car, which Waters said was stolen, while a woman was still inside. While the detective took that man into custody, a U.S. deputy marshal and a St. Johns County deputy in the task force then shot and killed the suspect. The sheriff did not say what the suspect did to prompt the use of deadly force or whether he was armed.
Waters said this same rape suspect also was wanted in a stabbing murder last week in Jacksonville. He did not say what, if any, charges were made against the driver or if the woman was arrested.
The last stabbing death was on May 16 on La Marche Drive off Normandy Boulevard. Corey Gerald Sampson Jr., 29, got into an altercation with another man and was slain, according to the Sheriff's Office. Sampson was out on bond awaiting trial for his February arrest on multiple drug charges, court records show. However, there's a discrepancy in that the Sheriff's Office does not list this as a murder on its website transparency page. It's listed as "pending classification," which indicates it could be justifiable.
No names have been released in Tuesday afternoon's shooting. Since the Jacksonville detective did not shoot, Waters said the Florida Department of Law Enforcement will take the lead in the investigation.
The FDLE historically does not release names, ages, reports or further details until its investigation is complete, which often takes more than a year. The Times-Union has pressed FDLE officials for timely and even basic information in past officer-involved shootings but has routinely been declined despite Florida's open records laws.
This is the first St. Johns County deputy shooting of the year. Last year also had one fatal shooting on Nov. 4 during an attempted arrest of an armed burglary suspect, 42-year-old Dustin Alan Rush, who led deputies on a chase and crash into Davis Park in Nocatee.
What happened in the Beaver Street police shooting?
In the first shooting Tuesday, it started with a road rage in the area of the Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway and Interstate 95 shortly before 1 a.m. Police tried to initiate a traffic stop, but the suspect instead led them on a 25- to 30-mile chase, Parker said.
Officers eventually were able to flatten the pickup truck's tires by setting up stop sticks around Interstate 295 and Commonwealth Avenue. When the man, 45-year-old Charles Curtis Guernsey of Glen St. Mary, got out and tried to flee, an officer wounded him with gunfire.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Second shooting in hours by officers in Jacksonville leaves 1 dead
