An off-duty Jacksonville Sheriff's Office lieutenant discharged his firearm into a semi-truck on I-95 South, leading to significant traffic disruption near Atlantic Boulevard. The incident, occured yesterday afternoon, involved a 70-year-old truck driver who was en route from Charlotte to Cape Coral and Lt. Mark Crawford of JSO, according to News4Jax. After their vehicles made contact for reasons still not established, Crawford, who was in plain clothes and driving an unmarked car, fired four rounds at the truck's engine bay.
During the incident that blocked the southbound lanes for hours as thousands of people were headed home, no injuries to the truck driver were reported. However, Lt. Crawford sustained an injury to his shoulder and was taken to the hospital for evaluation, as detailed by a spokesperson from the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office in an interview Action News Jax. Presently, there is no body camera footage of the event, as JSO lieutenants are not equipped with such devices. Nonetheless, the cooperative truck driver's vehicle camera could provide insight, with the driver granting police access to the footage.
JSO Chief Alan Parker reported that the driver did not return fire at Lt. Crawford, and while the driver was temporarily detained, he is not facing any charges at this time. This encounter marks Lt. Crawford's fourth officer-involved shooting in his 21-year career and is also the second such event for JSO in the current year. The circumstances leading up to and following the confrontation are still under investigation by the authorities, First Coast News reported.
Detailed information is awaited from an official statement by JSO regarding the events that transpired between the two men and those eventually like unravel. In the meantime, drivers on I-95 South experienced delays and were advised to seek alternate routes, as the ongoing investigation had a stretch of the interstate closed for several hours, relayed News4Jax. The truck, along with its camera footage, might prove critical in piecing together the sequence of events that led an off-duty officer to fire upon a civilian vehicle.
