A Florida sheriff's deputy is seen on video opening fire on a Black man who was searched, handcuffed and placed in a patrol vehicle after mistaking the sound of a falling acorn for a gunshot.
The body camera footage released Monday by the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office shows Deputy Jesse Hernandez yelling "Shots fired!" multiple times as he falls to the ground and repeatedly fires into the patrol vehicle last year.
Marquis Jackson was suspected of stealing his girlfriend's car earlier that morning and was restrained in the backseat. He was luckily unharmed by the gunshots, but says the incident left him traumatized.
Hernandez has since resigned from the sheriff's office and has not been charged in the incident.
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A stolen vehicle
Okaloosa County deputies responded to a call on the morning of Nov. 12 in Fort Walton Beach, about 65 miles west of Panama City on Florida's panhandle, according to a press release last week from the Okaloosa Sheriff’s Office.
A woman called to report her boyfriend, Marquis Jackson, who was refusing to return her car and had been calling and texting her threats, the release said.
U.S. & World
Deputies Javier Reyna, Deja Riley, Jesse Hernandez and Sergeant Beth Roberts responded to the scene.
Jackson walked up to the scene around 10 minutes after the officers arrived. He was detained, searched, handcuffed and placed in the back of Hernandez's patrol car.
The woman then completed an affidavit for the stolen vehicle. She told deputies Jackson had a silencer, and she was not sure where it was, and that he had more than one weapon, the press release said.
Riley and Reyna left to search for the missing vehicle. They found it about three miles away.
As Roberts continued to work with the woman, Hernandez approached his patrol car to conduct a secondary search of Jackson when he heard "a pop sound."
'Shots fired! Shots fired!'
When Hernandez was approaching the passenger side rear door, an acorn could be seen striking the top of his patrol car, according to the internal investigation report from January. Hernandez perceived the sound to be a gunshot and believed he had been hit.
He yelled “Shots fired!” multiple times, fell to the ground, rolled and began firing his semi-automatic pistol into the patrol car, according to the body camera footage of the incident.
Roberts asks where the shots are coming from, to which Hernandez answers, "In the car."
"Jesse, are you okay?" Roberts yelled shortly after. Hernandez is heard in the video saying, "I'm hit! I'm hit!"
After witnessing Hernandez open fire, Roberts responded with gunshots of her own.
"He shot through the car," Hernandez said as he crawled on his hands and knees to find cover behind a parked vehicle.
“I’m good. I feel weird, but I’m good,” he added.
'All I could depend on was God!'
Jackson recounted the incident on Facebook, writing about the experience of being shot at while handcuffed and strapped down by the seatbelts in the backseat of the patrol car.
"All I could do was lean over and play dead to prevent getting shot in the head," Jackson wrote in a Facebook post. "I was scared to death and I knew all I could depend on was God! I ignored everything and prayed!"
The windows shattered as bullets flew around the patrol car, he said. Jackson was unharmed, but the incident left him traumatized.
"I was blessed not to get hit by any bullets or get hurt physically but mentally, I'm not okay," Jackson said. "I haven't been the same since, and I don't think this feeling I have will ever change. I truly believe I'm damaged for life!"
He says an ambulance took him to Fort Walton Beach Medical Center, still in handcuffs, to be checked for any injuries. Jackson then says he was taken to the Okaloosa County Courthouse and "sat in the cell for hours." Eventually, he was released with no charges.
'I mean, that's what I heard'
Investigators sat down with Hernandez three days after the incident to conduct a sworn interview.
Hernandez says he heard what he believed was a "suppressed weapon" as he reached for the rear door handle of his patrol car. He "felt an impact" on the right upper torso area, according to the internal investigation report.
"The original reason I was firing was because I was sitting in the open there," Hernandez told the investigators. "I had only moved a couple feet from where I felt I had just been shot from the back of this patrol car. And I didn't know how I was gonna get up and move to that covered area."
Hernandez was shown still photos taken from his body camera footage of the acorn bouncing off the roof of his patrol car, the internal investigation report states. Investigators asked if it was possible the noise he heard could have been the acorn.
"I'm not gonna say no, because, I mean, that's what I heard," Hernandez said. "What I heard sounded what I think would be louder than an acorn hitting the roof of the car, but there's obviously an acorn hitting the roof of the car."
Internal investigation
The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office of Professional Standards conducted an internal investigation into the actions taken by Hernandez and Roberts on Nov. 12.
The use of force by Hernandez was determined to be not objectively reasonable and violated the policy regarding the "excessive use of control to resistance." He resigned in December while under investigation.
Roberts was exonerated as the Office of Professional Standards found her use of deadly force to be objectively reasonable.
The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigations Division reviewed the incident for any possible criminal charges. The Sheriff's Office also requested an independent review by the First Judicial Circuit State Attorney's Office. No probable cause for criminal charges was found, according to the press release.
"We understand this situation was traumatic for Mr. Jackson and all involved and have incorporated this officer involved shooting it into our training to try to ensure nothing similar happens again," Sheriff Eric Aden said. "We are very thankful Mr. Jackson wasn't injured and we have no reason to think former Deputy Hernandez acted with any malice."
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