JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office has just shared four new body cam videos that show what happened when an officer was shot outside Baptist Medical Center South in April.
JSO said that the trouble started when an officer who wasn’t on duty saw a strange car going through the hospital parking lot. The cop tried to stop the car, but the person who was later found to be the shooter, Jeffrey Martin, kept going.
In one clip, Martin was driving a white Chevy Impala up to an officer. The officer told Martin several times to stop the car. Martin said no, so he yelled, “Shoot it!” “Shoot it!” is what the video says.
The cop can then be heard shouting, “He’s got a zero!” (JSO code for a gun) more than once, and then you hear a shot.
In the second clip, the cop is driving in the parking lot and making a radio call as they look for Jeffrey. Jeffrey wasn’t trying to get away from the police, though. He was making an effort to talk to them.
Jeffrey hits two police cars, and then an officer hits Jeffrey’s car from behind and gets out of his car with a gun pulled. After the shot, the cop fires several times into Jeffrey’s car.
The cop who was hit says what happened in the third clip. After Martin’s car has stopped, he walks up to it. The camera gets a flash of Martin’s shot, and the hurt cop stumbles backward and falls to his knees.
The cop can be heard saying, “I’ve been shot!” “I’ve been shot in the throat,” someone said between the shots.
Another cop comes over to help the officer who was hurt.
The video also showed pictures of the damage to the police cars, Martin’s weapon, and an AK-47 found in Martin’s car with more than 90 rounds of ammo.
Lakesha Burton, a crime and safety expert for News4JAX, said that the cops did what they were supposed to do.
“You have to understand that if you’ve never been in a shootout, it’s hard to know what the excitement and chaos are like.
This is a person who tried to kill police officers. Then, one of the most important things they had to do was keep this person in place.
So he couldn’t go anywhere else. I think they did everything they could to stop that from happening. “Unfortunately, the suspect was killed because of it,” Burton said.
The footage from the body camera was made public 21 days after the killing.
A criminal probe is still being done by the State Attorney’s Office. The cop who was shot is healing from his injury.
