JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – An eyewitness to the shooting on Interstate 95 involving an off-duty Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office lieutenant last month is shedding new light on what happened. But many questions are still left unanswered.
The shooting happened just north of Emerson Street, and an eyewitness, who was named in the crash report but asked not to be identified, told News4JAX that Lieutenant Marc Crawford fired his gun at a semi-truck driver who was still in the cab of his truck.
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The account comes one day after JSO said Crawford was reassigned to the Tele-Serv team, the unit that takes reports on minor incidents over the phone in order to relieve officers to handle more serious investigations. Crawford was originally placed on administrative leave following the shooting that happened during rush hour on March 10 and backed up traffic for hours.
After the incident happened, there were questions if there was some kind of physical confrontation that led up to the officer firing four bullets into the truck.
The witness said Crawford, who is also a sharpshooter, fired in the direction of the 70-year-old truck driver. And in the eyewitness’ opinion, the officer overreacted after the two vehicles collided on the highway.
The witness said they heard gunshots while they were driving and thought it was a motorcycle backfiring. Then, traffic stopped.
Startled by the gunfire, the eyewitness said Crawford fired his weapon four times at the driver of an 18-wheeler while the 70-year-old truck driver was still inside his vehicle.
“And I’m going, ‘Why were you shooting? Why were you shooting at all?’ That was the part that got to me. All you had to do is pull in front of them with your lights on, and the guy would have stopped. He wasn’t going fast anyway. But it just seemed to me, it was overreacting,” he said.
The witness says that after the gunfire, Crawford readjusted the position of his unmarked vehicle and activated small police lights before approaching the driver while shouting unknown commands.
“He’s got his gun above his head, and he’s aiming at the truck. Then he jumps back into the car, pulls forward, and it hits at a 45-degree angle the opposite way, so he’s just ahead of the truck, jumps back out, and that’s when the truck comes to a stop...and we’re all stopped...At this point the guy gets out of the truck and gets down on the ground,” he said.
According to a newly released crash report, obtained by News4JAX on Thursday, investigators found Crawford at fault for the crash and a diagram showed the two positions that Crawford’s vehicle was in during the traffic incident.
As a law enforcement officer, Crawford has the right against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment, so he didn’t immediately have to give a statement to his employer, JSO.
“It’s interesting to see as these details come out, that they’re coming out not from the sheriff’s office or not from the involved officer there, but they’re coming out from witnesses that are there,” said News4JAX Crime and Safety expert Tom Hackney. “And we talked initially, when this whole thing started, that this is the kind of thing that takes these investigations so long, because if that officer is not cooperating and not providing information, investigators are going to have to do just what’s been done today, find the witnesses, talk to witnesses, look for information.”
Hackney, who worked for JSO for more than 20 years, acknowledged the difficulty in finding a reasonable explanation for the officer’s decision to use deadly force.
“You know, when you look at the whole circumstances surrounding this, the crash that was there, somehow these two vehicles collided. And, you know, maybe that’s the precursor to whatever happened there. And you know from what the witness today is telling News4JAX, and you start seeing these things start to come together. It starts to paint a picture again, even without the input from that officer, the picture starts to be painted about potentially some responsibility on the side of this officer,” Hackey said.
So far no charges have been filed, and the State Attorney’s Office is investigating.
The JSO transparency page shows that the 70-year-old truck driver was shot. A JSO spokesperson told News4JAX the driver suffered a “non-penetrating gunshot wound,” which was also defined as a bruise.
According to JSO’s statement after the shooting, Crawford “came into contact” with the truck. Then, JSO said Crawford, who was in plain clothes and in an unmarked vehicle, got out of his car and engaged with the driver before firing four rounds into the truck, which ended up in the engine bay.
After the shooting, JSO said the driver was not hurt, but said the lieutenant was taken to the hospital with an “injury to his shoulder.”
News4JAX contacted JSO to get more information and confirm what the agency told the Times-Union, but our emails were not immediately returned.
Lt. Crawford has been involved in four other officer-involved shootings during his career.