Sheriff T.K. Waters asks for the public's help to find those who have killed children and adults in a recent rash of murders. | Dan Scanlan, WJCT News 89.9
Published on September 27, 2023 at 7:15 pm
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Six slayings since last Friday — including a 3-year-old girl on Saturday and a 6-year-old on Wednesday — have left Jacksonville reeling and police searching for answers.
Sheriff T.K. Waters said Wednesday that he was heartbroken over the the violence befalling his city so far this year.
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And he had a question: Where is the community outrage and people angry enough to pass on tips that can lead detectives to the people who pulled the triggers?
Anger boiled in other parts of the community as well. Isaiah Rumlin, head of Jacksonville’s NAACP, said the group is outraged.
“The African American leaders should continue to stand in solidarity as they did previously over the recent mass shooting and call out the violence and senseless killings in the Black community,” Rumlin wrote. “The NAACP is strongly speaking out against these atrocities and is demanding a cease-fire. We strongly encourage anyone with information on this latest shooting or any other shooting to report it to the authorities immediately.”
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After Wednesday’s death, MAD DADs Jacksonville shared a Facebook post calling the slaying “absolutely unacceptable in our city.”
“This is the second child in a span of four days to be murdered in our city,” the post said. “This child was only 6. We can’t continue to let these killers stay on our streets.”
Waters held a news conference only 15 hours after the 6-year-old was killed in a triple shooting that left a man and a 12-year-old injured at an apartment complex on King Street. The 6-year-old is the ninth child to be shot and killed in Jacksonville since the beginning of the year, according to police records.
“The 6- and 12-year-old were asleep in their bed when a single bullet hit them both, killing one and injuring the other,” Waters said. “As I have said, any loss of life is tragic and unacceptable. I have said it repeatedly — one murder is one murder too many. But when innocent children are slaughtered as collateral damage to senseless acts of damage, I can’t stay quiet.”
In a news conference Wednesday morning, Assistant Chief J.D. Stronko called the 6-year old’s death “absolutely heartbreaking.”
“We are going to pour all the resources in,” Stronko said. “The sheriff gives us the best resources, the best tools to try to identify these individuals who commit these crimes, and we will do the best to bring him to justice. But, absolutely, these are the phone calls that you do not want to get in the middle of the night.”
Investigators say the gunman ran away. Stronko could not confirm whether the man and two children were related.
Waters said he knows that many in Jacksonville are tired of the violence. But while he said he is appalled, “I am not without hope.” So he again urged people to be “angry enough to talk about it” and pass on tips that lead detectives to the killers.
“I ask you to not allow that emotional exhaustion to turn into apathy,” Waters said. “I am looking for the outrage from our community. I am looking for solidarity. I am looking for us to join together and fight this issue together because my belief is this — if a community wants to stop a problem, that community can do it.”
Wednesday was not the first time Waters has spoken out about violence against children in the city.
On Dec. 5, as a new sheriff, he vowed to add more investigators in response to a shooting Dec. 3 that left a 13-year-old boy dead in the Lincoln Villas community in Northwest Jacksonville.
Standing with community and religious leaders on the steps of the Sheriff’s Office, Waters said the boy was a “needless, senseless victim of gun violence that plagues our community.”
Counting Wednesday’s shooting, at least 25 children have been shot in Jacksonville this year, according to records compiled by News4Jax, a Jacksonville Today news partner. Among those:
- A 3-year-old girl and two adults were killed Saturday night at an apartment on A.C. Skinner Parkway. The shootings happened about 10 p.m. at the JTB apartments. Stronko said four adults and the child had gone to the complex to possibly sell a dog, and a dispute erupted in gunfire in a complex breezeway. Waters said “gang connections” may have been the reason for the shooting. Witnesses told investigators that two men drove away in a black sedan.
- A 9-year-old girl was injured when she was shot in the throat late July 21 when someone shot up the home she was in on West 19th Street, the Sheriff’s Office said. The girl was with six others inside the home near Myrtle Avenue when shots were fired just after 9 p.m., police said.
- A 6-year-old boy died Aug. 15 after a gun went off while a 9-year-old boy held it. The 6-year-old was shot in the head about 2:45 p.m. at a home on Shady Pine Street South.
- On Sept. 4, a 15-year-old was fatally shot in the middle of Java Drive after multiple witnesses reported hearing some type of argument. Investigators said it’s unclear what led to the shooting.
The sheriff said an additional 40 police officers are included in the city budget that City Council approved Tuesday night. And he had a message to parents.
“We are going to do everything that we can to make sure that your loved ones are safe, that your kids are safe,” Waters said. “That’s a part of the reason why there’s a little bit of frustration spilling over because I don’t want to see kids suffer needlessly with this kind of nonsense.”
Anyone with information about Wednesday’s shooting is asked to call the Sheriff’s Office at (904) 630-0500, or stay anonymous by giving a tip to First Coast Crime Stoppers at (866) 845- 8477 (TIPS).
