JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Action News Jax is looking into whether a lawsuit against the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office may be filed in the officer-involved shooting of an unarmed 14-year-old boy charged with grand theft auto.
Action News Jax first told you last month when a JSO officer was involved in a shooting on the evening of November 1st, in the Moncrief neighborhood. At the time, we were told that a 14-year-old had been shot multiple times after JSO reported he’d been inside a stolen Kia that hit a JSO car and crashed into a business near the intersection of Moncrief Road and MLK Jr. Parkway.
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JSO said the teen had jumped out of the car and started running after the crash and was shot after the officer who responded asked the 14-year-old to take his hands out of his pants, believing he was reaching for a gun.
Today, the state attorney’s office told Action News Jax the boy never had a gun and that JSO had mistakenly linked the boy to two separate crimes that he didn’t commit.
JSO said the boy was part of a group of four teens who had stolen a DoorDash driver’s black Kia Optima earlier that night. Various 911 calls shared by JSO show that, a few minutes after the DoorDash driver called 911, a hit-and-run was reported about four minutes away, near Brentwood Avenue and Golfair Boulevard, also involving a black Kia.
A few minutes after the hit-and-run call, JSO said it received another 911 call from the same area, from a man who said his uncle had been shot on Brentwood Avenue. JSO’s 911 calls show that a dispatcher pointed out that the hit-and-run had happened only a few minutes before the call about the shooting, so the stolen black Kia Optima was named as the suspected vehicle involved in all three of those crimes.
But not long after, a JSO lieutenant told a dispatcher that the vehicle involved in the shooting may be a Dodge Durango, a black SUV, rather than a Kia Optima, a sedan. JSO said this information never reached the officer who shot the 14-year-old, who had seen the stolen Kia less than an hour later near the intersection of Main Street and MLK Jr. Parkway.
JSO body camera video shows that the officer had chased the Kia to the point where it eventually crashed, before the shooting. JSO named Officer Jacob Cahill as the officer who was involved in the shooting and said that he has since been put on administrative leave, even though the state attorney’s office has said his use of force against the 14-year-old was lawful.
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Chris Carson, a Jacksonville criminal defense attorney who isn’t connected to this case, told Action News Jax that he believes a civil lawsuit against JSO could be possible. He pointed out that the miscommunication amongst JSO on the night of the shooting could provide an argument for a lawsuit to be made, but it depends on the exact information JSO had about the 14-year-old at the time he was shot, and whether he was believed to be a real danger.
“I think the issue that potentially may arise here, if it turns out that that information was actually in the possession of JSO, but just never made its way to the officer,” said Carson, “certainly that disconnect, I think, could create some issues in terms of civil liability.”
We’ve been told the 14-year-old has since been released from the hospital. The state attorney’s office told us that JSO is updating its policies so that critical updates from dispatchers go citywide, rather than to specific police service stations.
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