A JSO chief said the officer opened fire after the suspect pounded the hood of the police car and “attacked” the officer.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A man was fatally shot by a Jacksonville sheriff’s officer after reportedly assaulting the officer’s vehicle and attacking him on the city’s Westside on Sunday morning.
That man has been identified as 39-year-old Michael Lee Wright.
According to a JSO chief, the incident began when Wright’s girlfriend contacted the authorities requesting an escort to retrieve some of her belongings from their home, as she feared for her safety.
According to police, Wright’s girlfriend had left the home Saturday night and came back Sunday morning.
That’s when the girlfriend says he started attacking her and throwing things at her car.
Video from a neighbor shows how Wright reacted to police arriving, and that neighbor said he wishes this could’ve been resolved in a different way.
“I heard ‘bang, bang, bang,'” said Alexi Ubilla, who witnessed the aftermath of the shooting.
Ubilla thought that the sound was someone hammering while doing a little home maintenance.
But when he popped his head out the door, he found out it was a shooting in his front yard.
“I’m not a certified nurse or anything, but I wanted to see if I could offer some assistance,” said Ubilla. “I just wanted to check if he was still alive.”
Ubilla’s doorbell camera captured what happened in the 30 seconds or so leading up to that moment.
The video shows Wright pounding on the hood of an officer’s car, then hitting the window, yelling and swearing.
Officer Patrick Burke backs down the street, with Wright following after him.
As Wright approaches the car, Burke drives into him, pushing him into Ubilla’s yard.
Chief Alan Parker described what happened when Wright got back up after getting hit by the car.
“The guy gets up in front of the car as the officer is getting out of the vehicle,” said Parker. “The guy is charging with stuff in his hands. The officer is telling him to drop it, put it down. He does not. The officer shoots him.”
Parker didn’t elaborate on what stuff was in Wright’s hand, but the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office shared a picture of scissors found under Burke’s car after the shooting.
“He was saying things like, ‘Go ahead, kill me. Go ahead, kill me,'” said Parker. “Earlier in the day, he texted the female from the earlier incident, ‘I’m going to die today.’ We don’t know his intentions, but this is all fluid and everything that went on.”
Ubilla is concerned by how close all of this was to his home.
“What if those would’ve gone through the wall,” said Ubilla. “My wife would be doing something in that room, nails or something. Bang, she gets hit. My kids playing with the dog, bang they get hit.”
This is the eighth shooting involving a JSO officer so far this year.
