NASSAU COUNTY, Fla. – A SWAT team member shot and killed a woman Tuesday night who brandished a firearm and threatened to “blow everyone away,” according to a spokesperson for the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office.
Deputies were sent to a home on Ruby Drive in Hilliard at about 1:30 p.m. Tuesday. The spokesperson told News4Jax that the 48-year-old woman at the home was intoxicated and had apparently visited her ex’s house where she reportedly threatened a woman that was inside.
According to the Sheriff’s Office, after returning to her house, the 48-year-old got into an argument with her father. The Sheriff’s Office said her father called deputies, saying his daughter was in possession of three firearms.
The Sheriff’s Office said a Special Response Team was sent out to the home, and that the woman threatened suicide and to “blow everyone away.”
“Several times she came out of the trailer onto a screen porch and pointed an AR-15 rifle at the SRT vehicle where some of the deputies were stationed,” said Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper. “Then she made a statement to deputies that she was going to shoot. There was a deputy out in the woods. She was going to shoot the deputy in the wooded area.”
According to Leeper, the woman came outside on the back porch and raised a rifle at the deputy. That deputy shot one time, Leeper said, killing her.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement will investigate. The woman has not yet been named, but the Sheriff’s Office said it plans to do so.
There is no body camera footage of the shooting because the Nassau County deputies don’t have them.
News4Jax on Wednesday received a 911 call, which was said to be made by the 48-year-old woman. She tells a dispatch operator she has guns and ammo, and that she’ll only come out of deputies leave the yard.
“I’ll come out with my hands up. I’ve got more heavy artillery than y’all have, you understand? I’m packed full of ammunition,” she’s heard saying.
About two minutes into the call, she begins crying.
“I just want my baby boy back. That is all I want,” she’s heard saying.
Court and property records show the woman at the address had a son, and that the father filed a motion in September to suspend the mother’s visitation. A neighbor confirmed to News4Jax that the woman had several children and recently lost custody of her youngest son. That neighbor asked not to be identified.
“I feel for the family. I mean, my thoughts are with the family that is so sad that they lost their mother," the neighbor said. “She needed help and obviously yesterday was a cry for help and shouldn’t have gone down that way.”
According to the Sheriff’s Office, the woman has a criminal history dating back through the early 2000s, including charges of child neglect and domestic battery.
The Sheriff’s Office said the deputy who shot the woman has been with the department for about three years, and this was his first deputy-involved shooting. He’s been placed on administrative leave, which is standard procedure.