JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The food truck community came together the day before Charles Faggart would be laid to rest.
Faggart, a food truck owner himself, died in April after an incident at the Duval County jail involving nine correctional staff members.
He will be laid to rest at the Arlington Park Cemetery. Other food truck owners gathered outside the funeral home to honor his memory on Friday at the viewing.
“Charles is one of the people that brought people like everybody together. So everybody coming together for him today, it means the world. I know it does for his dad, his mom and everybody else,” Faggart’s brother-in-law Randy Richards said.
Faggart was a caterer, known as the man behind “Chop it Charlie’s.”
“I love Uncle Charles very much. He was my favorite guy,” Isaiah Richards, Faggart’s nephew, said.
Organizers of the memorial event called it a day of love, food, music and shared memories.
Randy Richards shared his favorite memory of Faggart.
“Just being around him all the time,” he said. “We worked together in this food truck. We hung out not on a daily basis, but a lot, we’re always around each other. We’re good, good friends, besides being brother-in-law.”
Chef Love, owner of Chef Love Soul Cuisine, didn’t know Faggart but one of her cooks worked with him.
“He said he was a good guy. He loved his child, he had a bright future. He was passionate, and he was good in the kitchen, and he loved people, and they just expressed that this was something that they didn’t understand and shouldn’t have happened the way it happened,” Love said.
Love stressed that the family deserved answers from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
“They deserve that, and we’re hoping that the sheriff is going to definitely get behind the situation and find out. I know, speaking to Charlie’s father, he needs closure, and the family deserves that,” she said.
Faggart’s family and friends have held multiple protests outside of city hall and the JSO headquarters to press officials for more details into Faggart’s case.
“He wasn’t a violent person at all. I’ve never known to be violent. He might raise his voice in anger or something,“ Randy Richards said. ”Never violence. So for something like that to happen to him, and nine officers for one guy that’s not going to hurt nobody. It’s ridiculous, and they need to pay, and I will be at every court date along with the family and everybody else.”