JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A 16-year-old girl was shot and a 19-year-old man was pistol-whipped during an armed robbery about midnight Friday in the Mandarin area, police said.
The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office is looking for two men involved in the robbery, which was reported at the Camri Green Apartments off Losco Road.
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Police were originally called out to a Publix parking lot directly in front of the apartments, because the man drove himself and the girl there to get away from the men who approached their car in the apartment parking lot.
News4Jax is not naming the two teens, because the robbers have not been caught.
The 19-year-old told police that he and the 16-year-old were parking their car to meet a friend, when two men approached them, demanding money.
He said one man pulled the girl out of the car, and the other man started beating him with a pistol.
He said he heard a gunshot and realized the girl was shot, and the two men ran off. She was hit in the pelvic area and was struggling to stay conscious when police found them at the Publix. She was rushed to a trauma center.
Police said both teens told different accounts to different officers, changing their stories multiple times, but both said they had never seen the men before.
News4Jax crime and safety analyst Gil Smith said the different stories hurt the case, because police don’t know what to believe.
“That tells police they may have been involved in some way or they may know the suspects,” Smith said. “If they are truly innocent victims, the story is going to be pretty much the same. There may be slight variation, but for the most part the same.”
A woman who lives near where the teens said the shooting happened said she didn’t hear anything, and the apartment manager declined to comment.
Smith said that although some consider Mandarin a safe area, it has been seeing more crimes like this.
JSO’s crime map shows that within the last three months in a mile radius of the apartment, police have responded to 91 incidents:
- 24 thefts
- 13 assaults
- 1 robbery
- 1 homicide
Smith said it’s important for victims to surrender to a person with a gun.
“Armed robberies are on the increase. Sometimes they do know the victims; sometimes they don’t,” Smith said. “Give them whatever they want, whatever they ask. They have a gun on them and you could be killed instantly.”
Smith also said it would have been better for the teens to stay in the apartment complex and call police, especially since the men ran away.
“Stay right where you are and call police, because you have an entire crime scene and police need to process that, evidence and witnesses, it’s best just to stay there at the scene,” Smith said.