Jacksonville police shoot and kill robbery suspect attempting to escape
By: Officers shot and killed a 26-year-old robbery suspect after the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office said a shot was fired at them Tuesday evening at an apartment complex on the city's Westside.
Darian Quinlan Bryant, identified by the Sheriff's Office, becomes the city's third police shooting this year.
Chief T.K. Waters said it started with a robbery call about 6:45 p.m. outside a business in the 5800 block of Normandy Boulevard. Police arrived in a few minutes, and the victim pointed to the suspect fleeing on foot.
They followed him to Westwood Apartments at 1171 S. Lane Ave., Waters said. They searched for about 45 minutes before being tipped he was in a specific apartment. After several calls for him to come out, he finally did with his hands in the air. But as they began to approach him, he darted off and tried to escape over a fence.
"One of the patrol officers tried to cut him off in a vehicle," Waters said. "He fell back onto the car and jumped over the fence. Officers followed him behind the fence where a struggle ensued. During the struggle, the suspect fired one shot and officers returned fire."
Bryant died at the scene. The two officers who fired were not identified.
The Sheriff's Office released an image of the semi-automatic handgun investigators said they recovered at the scene.
Bryant had four fleeing and resisting police arrests among his prior charges, according to Duval County court records.
The city's first police shooting of the year occurred on Jan. 8 after two officers pulled over a car in the 11000 block of Lem Turner Road. Teronnie Austin Wade, 27, was shot by officer in the incident and remains jailed without bail on multiple counts including attempted murder of a police officer.
The most recent shooting was on Feb. 1 on Spring Grove Avenue when a 15-year-old boy was shot after officers found three masked men outside a home when a family alerted police to suspicious social media postings at their home, police said. The boy survived and was not identified.