Jacksonville police shoot and kill armed woman after she fires at them

Jacksonville police shot and killed a woman Sunday morning after she fired a gun at them in a Northside neighborhood, the Sheriff’s Office says.

Officers had searched for the 32-year-old woman in connection with gun incidents on other Northside streets the day before.

At 9:15 a.m. Saturday, a 911 caller told dispatchers that a woman was waving a gun on Monaco Drive. Officers searched but found no one.

Then just after 10 a.m., police got reports of a woman pointing a gun at a man and his dog on Briarcliff Road East. Again, police found no one when they got there.

Officers did find the woman about 10:15 a.m. Sunday, when they were called to Mar Vic Lane near Dunn Avenue after reports that a woman had pointed a gun at a man.

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She failed to heed multiple commands to take her hands out of a bag, undersheriff Mark Romano said.

“This individual was yelling at officers,” Romano said. “She had a couple of bags in her hands.”

The woman then walked away. Four officers followed for about a quarter mile. At Mar Vic and Biscayne, she pulled a gun out of her bag and shot one time at the officers, Romano said. The bullet hit a police cruiser.

Three of the four officers returned fire, and the woman died at the scene. Romano did not release any information about the officers involved

Asked whether officers tried to de-escalate the situation and get the woman to drop the gun, Sheriff T.K. Waters said:

“That was the de-escalation technique — following her all the way down the street, asking her to show her hands, and then ultimately at one point asking her to drop the gun. How else do you de-escalate something like that?”

The was the 15th officer-involved shooting for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office this year, compared 17 all of last year, police say.