State Attorney Melissa Nelson explains why she decided a police officer's shooting of an unarmed boy was lawful. | News4Jax
Published on December 4, 2025 at 10:33 am
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The State Attorney’s Office says a police officer acted lawfully when he shot an unarmed boy in the back after a pursuit a month ago in the Brentwood area.
State Attorney Melissa Nelson said Officer Jacob Cahill committed no crime when he used lethal force against the 14-year-old teen.
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The findings are described in a 105-page review released Wednesday.
The shooting Nov. 1 followed reports of three crimes that occurred within two miles of each other and intially appeared related — but were not. They included a fatal shooting, a hit-and-run and the theft of a car from a food delivery person.
After reviewing the case, Nelson said it was “a perfect storm of events” that resulted in a communications breakdown that certainly contributed to the incident.
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When investigators learned that the Kia was not the suspected vehicle in the shooting, the information was not dispatched to officers in other police zones, she said.
The Sheriff’s Office is updating dispatch protocols to ensure critical updates like this are sent out to all six police zones, Nelson said.
The communication breakdown is essential to understanding the case, Nelson said. One group of officers believed the Kia’s occupants had been involved in the shooting and continued to operate under a “heightened threat,” she said.
But, “while communication gaps contributed to this incident, it is simultaneously true that the teenagers’ decisions to steal a car, then flee police, created a dangerous, unpredictable environment that put themselves, law enforcement officers and the public at large at risk,” Nelson said. “But for that theft of the DoorDash driver’s car, this erroneous conflation of information also would not occur.”
The boy’s actions
The incident started about 6 p.m. Nov. 1, when a Kia was reported stolen. When officers spotted the car on Moncrief Road, they believed it was related to the other incidents, including a person found shot to death on Brentwood Avenue about the time the car was reported stolen, Nelson said.
Officers chased the Kia, which fled and hit a police cruiser before slamming into a building on Myrtle Avenue. Two people inside the Kia stayed put, but two others — including the unnamed 14-year-old — ran away, Nelson said. Cahill started chasing him, Chief Alan Parker said at the time.
“And as he was running he was yelling, get your hands out of your pants; stop reaching in your pants, I’ll shoot, and he ended up engaging the suspect,” Parker said Nov. 1. “He shot multiple times — the suspect was hit and went down. They got him detained fairly quickly, got him handcuffed.
Nelson said Cahill believed the boy was the driver and was armed. “This belief was based on the following: Cahill’s understanding that the Kia had been involved in a shooting; the suspect’s obvious intent to avoid apprehension at all costs; and the car had just fled police at high speed and crashed; the inability to see the suspect’s left hand in the dark,” Nelson said.
“It was quickly discovered that the suspect was unarmed, and his motion toward his waistband was likely grabbing at his pants and not a weapon,” she said.
The teen was hospitalized in critical condition but has since been released.
The officer’s pursuit
This is Cahill’s second shooting in his three-year career and the 15th so far this year, police say.
Nelson said her office moved quickly to make its decision on whether Cahill had committed a crime, a decision that normally takes months. She said her staff have met to reach what she called “a factual conclusion.”
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She said Cahill’s actions were assessed from the perspective of an officer at the scene and not “with the benefit of hindsight.”
“And (we) must consider all facts known to, and reasonably believed by him, at the moment force is deployed,” Nelson said. “The question is not what we know now, but what a reasonable officer could have believed in that moment based on the information available to him.”
Florida law also authorizes deadly force to prevent the escape of a suspect believed to have committed a forcible felony when the offer sees a threat to himself and others, she said. That permitted lethal force here, she said.
The Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday released a video report about the shooting, including details, radio traffic and Cahill’s bodycam video, which shows the chase and shooting. The State Attorney’s Office initially asked the agency not to release any body-worn camera footage to avoid compromising the investigation.
In the video, Cahill can be heard yelling at the running person to stop running or he will be shot and to take his hands out of his pants. Multiple gunshots ring out. The injured teen’s image is blanked out on the video as he screams that “I don’t got nothing” and is handcuffed at gunpoint.
Nelson warned that bodycam videos will not show what officers heard, saw or perceived, and her office’s investigation has tried to tell the full story with all available facts.
Although no gun was visible or recovered on the teen, she said the law does not require an officer to wait until a suspect uses a weapon before deadly force is applied, if they believe someone is armed.
The Sheriff’s Office said it will conduct an internal review to determine if Cahill acted within department policy, but did not say when.
