JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office released footage Friday from several body cameras that captured a deadly officer-involved shooting earlier this month in the Dinsmore area.
Jose Cabrera, 62, was fatally shot in the early hours of Feb. 13 after he “aggressively” approached officers while armed with a knife, JSO said.
The body cameras of the three officers who fired at Cabrera captured their brief interaction with him, along with the shooting and the aftermath.
JSO said the entire incident -- from when an officer first spoke to Cabrera in the driveway of his son’s home until the shots were fired -- was only 19 seconds.
Cabrera died at the hospital.
How did it start?
Along with the bodycamera footage, JSO provided more specific details Friday about what led up to the shooting, beginning with an “armed domestic disturbance” reported at a home on Dunn Avenue around 10 p.m. on Feb. 12.
According to JSO, Cabrera’s wife told police that an intoxicated Cabrera had held her down while armed with a knife, threatening to kill her and himself.
JSO said she showed officers where Cabrera stabbed the wall above her head multiple times with the knife before she pushed him away, and he got into his car, driving away when he saw she had called the police.
According to JSO, his wife gave the responding officers a description of his car with the tag number and his phone number, and told them he was likely headed to the home of a family member on Fox Tail Lane. His son lives at the home.
That house was in another JSO district, so the original responding officers from District 6 alerted District 5 officers about what the wife had said, including that Cabrera was still armed with a knife.
Using the phone number the wife provided, an officer called Cabrera, who answered and said that officers would have to kill him before he would go back to prison. Then he hung up.
What we can see
At 12:29 a.m. on Feb. 13, Officers W. Morris, G. Griffis and R. Rhoden got to Fox Tail Lane and spotted Cabrera’s red Honda Odyssey van in the driveway of a home, JSO said.
JSO Undersheriff Shawn Coarsey said at the initial briefing that all three officers were new to the job and that it was their first night out on their own without a veteran training officer.
According to the body camera footage provided by JSO, Griffis was the first to spot the red van in the driveway, and all three officers approached from the back of the van.
Shining his flashlight into the van, Griffis tells the other officers, “He’s right here,” then addresses Cabrera with “Hey, man!”
Cabrera can be heard saying something inside the van that sounds like “Let’s go!” before Griffis asks him to step out of the vehicle.
Cabrera then snatches up a knife that Griffis had spotted on the center console and quickly steps out of the driver’s door.
As Cabrera is getting out, Griffis says, “Hey, don’t grab that!” then warns the other officers that Cabrera has a knife.
Cabrera can be seen stepping toward the officers at the back of the van with his hands swinging wildly into the air: the knife is in his right hand, and his cellphone is in his left.
He’s yelling, “Let’s go! C’mon, shoot me! Shoot me!” as the officers are yelling, “Drop the knife.”
When Cabrera steps to his left around the back of the van toward Griffis, all three officers start firing, and Griffis falls with a twisting motion to the ground, dropping the phone and the knife next to him in the grass.
According to JSO, Cabrera had closed to within 10 feet, which is the distance officers are trained to react with potentially lethal force if a subject has a knife.
Again, JSO said from the time Griffis first addressed Cabrera in the van to the moment he dropped to the ground after being shot was about 19 seconds.
After the shooting, Cabrera can be lying on the ground as Griffis immediately reports the “shots fired” call and then tells one of the other officers to get a medical bag so they can start first aid.
Another officer, who was not involved in the shooting, then approaches, puts on gloves to help with first aid, and reminds the others that they need to handcuff Cabrera before they start working on him.
The incident is still under investigation by the State Attorney’s Office.
Family wants answers
Cabrera’s family has been demanding answers from the Sheriff’s Office and told News4JAX that JSO warned them the footage would be released on Friday and would be difficult to watch.
Shortly after the shooting, Cabrera’s family disputed parts of the sheriff’s office account.
Joseph Cabrera said he was asleep when gunshots woke him, and he ran outside to find his father wounded on the ground.
In the body camera footage, Joseph Cabrera can be heard trying to tell the officers that it was his father on the ground as they shout at him to get back inside his house or he’ll be arrested
“I said, ‘Why you kill my dad? Why did you kill my dad?’ I said he didn’t have anything in his hand,” he said.
In their critical incident briefing, JSO paused and highlighted a portion of one body camera angle that shows the knife in Cabrera’s hand before he was shot.
Family members also questioned why officers did not use a Taser.
“It was 22, 25 shots, I counted,” Joseph Cabrera said. “Why too many shots?”
But Sheriff T.K. Waters said shortly after the shooting that Jose Cabrera made a choice to pick up the knife.
“When he grabbed the knife, [the officer] told him, don’t grab that. He told him not to bring it with him, but he did it anyway,” Waters said. “(He) left (them) with very little choice. When you are advancing toward a police officer holding a knife, the result is going to end up pretty much how it is.”
Cabrera’s daughter said her father struggled with mental illness.
“He was schizophrenic, bipolar,” she said.
After the State Attorney’s Office completes its review of the incident, JSO will then conduct an internal review to ensure the officers acted within policy.
News4JAX tried to contact Cabrera’s family after the video was released on Friday, but did not immediately hear back.