JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A K-9 helped capture a man on the Northside last week after two armed carjackings and a home invasion, during which a veteran’s family was held at gunpoint, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
Dewayne Edmund, 18, was arrested on two counts of armed carjacking and one count of armed home invasion robbery in connection with two incidents.
According to Edmund’s arrest reports, officers were called about 10 p.m. Saturday to a carjacking. A woman told police she pulled into her driveway after work and was walking to her front door when two men in black masks approached her from behind and she could feel two gun barrels pushing into the sides of her torso. One man then demanded her keys and both men then got into her Hyundai Tucson and took off, according to police.
The woman was not harmed and her vehicle had GoldStar GPS tracking, which began to notify police of the Hyundai’s location.
Police said they eventually found the Hyundai in a subdivision near the intersection of Yellow Bluff and Tisons Bluff roads. That’s where police said they were flagged down about another carjacking, as well as a home invasion.
James Simon told News4Jax that his 18-year-old son had just gotten home from work when two men with handguns approached him in the driveway and then forced him inside their home.
“That’s when they came upstairs with both my oldest son and my daughter at gunpoint and came in the room and told everybody to sit on the bed and basically just asked for money, any valuables, stuff like that," Simon said.
With a gun pointed at his family, Simon said, he did everything he could to distract the two men.
“My first thing was to keep his attention on me as far as asking questions. My wife was kind of nervous, but I was telling him, ‘Hey, we don’t have any money in the house,’" recounted Simon, who said he was able to think quickly. "I said, ‘I have some money in my truck. I can give that to you.' So he was, like, ‘OK. Come on, let’s go.’ So we went outside, got the money out of my truck, came back in, and about 5 to 10 minutes after that, they left.”
According to the Sheriff’s Office, the two men took off from the home in a Chevrolet Traverse, which Simon said belonged to his wife.
Officers said they spotted the Chevrolet at Yellow Bluff Road and Jake Road -- about 3 miles from Simon’s home. When they tried to pull the vehicle over, according to police, the Chevrolet crashed and Edmund ran off. One of the officers then released his K-9 and that’s when Edmund was arrested. According to one of the arrest reports, a handgun was found near him.
Edmund was booked early Sunday morning into the Duval County jail, where he was ordered held on $400,000 bond, online jail records show.
It’s unclear based on the arrest reports whether the second man has been caught.