JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The family of a man who was shot and killed in what police called a “road rage incident” last week in Sandalwood held a news conference Thursday to demand answers from law enforcement.
The family of 62-year-old Joe Starkey, who was a well-known musician and sound engineer, hired Attorney John Phillips to demand that the State Attorney’s Office and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office provide them with answers regarding his death.
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“The family is still looking for answers- and an arrest. They don’t even know the name of the person who did this and police have told them it may take, ‘many months,’” Phillips wrote in a news release.
On Dec. 10, JSO received a call about a shooting on St. Johns Bluff Road S., near Atlantic Boulevard.
When police arrived, they found a Starkey lying on the road with at least one gunshot wound. Police said after talking to several witnesses and the shooter, who turned himself in, it appeared that a “road rage incident” led to the shooting.
Damien Starkey, Joe Starkey’s son, told News4JAX his “heart feels completely shattered” after the loss of his dad.
“He taught me how to play. He taught me how to sing. He believed in me long before I ever believed in myself. Every part of my path in music began with him. He was always at our shows running sound making sure we were at our best. He supported every dream I chased and he worked with me in ways that reached far beyond music,” Damien Starkey wrote in a Facebook post. “He was my father, my friend, my foundation and my biggest fan. Losing him like this has taken the air out of me. I am broken and trying to make sense of something that makes no sense at all.”
Damien Starkey said he was set to perform in a reunion show with his band Burn Season this week, and his father was supposed to be the sound engineer.
JSO told News4JAX on Friday that the incident is an ongoing criminal investigation, and all witnesses have been interviewed.
The shooter has cooperated with police, JSO said, but as of Thursday, no arrests have been made.
Phillips sent a letter to State Attorney Melissa Nelson and Sheriff T.K. Waters to request more information about the suspected shooter, and demanded that “at a minimum” the driver should be “immediately charged related to his reckless driving, assault and attempted battery with a motor vehicle.”
Read the full letter below