JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Family members identified the man who was killed in a shooting Wednesday in the parking lot of Copeland’s restaurant on Jacksonville’s Southside.
The family identified the man as 38-year-old Kenneth Mobley.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office responded to a shooting at the restaurant located at the intersection of Southside Boulevard and Touchton Road. The incident prompted a large police presence. A JSO helicopter, drone, and K-9 were also seen at the scene.
Officers found Mobley with a gunshot wound to his chest, and he was taken to a hospital, where he died.
According to JSO, Mobley was there to meet someone. It’s unclear what the meeting was over.
“You don’t see a lot of that in broad daylight,” News4JAX Crime and Safety Analyst Tom Hackney said. “This is pretty brazen right there that touched in the Southside, there’s thousands of people around that area at any given time of day.”
Three people were detained for questioning; it’s unclear if one of them was the shooter. JSO said on Wednesday it was trying to determine their relationship to the man who was shot.
JSO is also searching for a black or dark-colored four-door vehicle, possibly a Nissan, that was at the scene.
Yana Royter, who works at a coffee shop called Brass Tacks, two buildings over from Copeland’s, said two of her coworkers ran back inside when they heard the gunshots.
“It all kind of happened so fast. I had only been here for 15 minutes, like it was the very start of my shift, and at first I was like, what’s going on? Then we were kind of nosy, and we went outside to go look, then we came back inside and locked the back door just in case, because we weren’t sure about what the situation was. But yeah, it was definitely really scary, and I’m really glad that they responded so quickly and ran back inside,” Royter said.
If you have any information on this shooting, call 904-630-0500.
This shooting was the first of three shootings that happened on Wednesday.
Around 5:30 p.m., JSO received reports about multiple shots fired in the Magnolia Gardens neighborhood. When officers arrived at the scene around 5:30 p.m., they found the man suffering from two gunshot wounds in the front yard of a home.
JSO said the man was shot in the elbow and hip. He was taken to the hospital in stable condition.
The third shooting happened around 9 p.m. at the Vista Landing apartments on Cleveland Road, where an 18-year-old was killed and three other young men were injured.
JSO told News4JAX reporter Briana Brownlee that the three wounded victims were in serious condition at last check.
Police are still trying to figure out exactly what led up to each shooting.
No arrests have been made in any of the shootings.
“It’s tough because you get a lot of people who are out there who maybe have seen something, but that’s that’s a tough nut to crack, because people don’t want to talk about what they’ve seen,” Hackney said.
News4JAX reached out to JSO to ask if there were any updates regarding the shootings.
“These investigations are ongoing. We do not have any further information available to our office at this time. Once more information is available, it will be disseminated,” JSO responded.
