JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The man who was accused of stabbing two Jacksonville paramedics inside an ambulance in 2019 pled guilty on Wednesday to two counts of second-degree attempted murder.
A judge then sentenced Tony Harris to 12 years in prison, with credit for 800 days served in jail, followed by three years probation.
News4JAX was told the victims aren’t necessarily happy with the sentence, but all parties agreed it was the best option.
One of the victims said he hopes Harris eventually turns his life around.
“Hopefully he can get out, stay on the clean and narrow and be a member of society again, once it gets finished,” Latorrence Norris said. “It’s not my job to punish anybody or judge anybody. I am upset, you know, clearly, he has some mental issues that contributed to it.”
The case was set for trial on Jan. 24 and Harris’ lawyers were planning an insanity defense before the guilty plea.
Harris entered a guilty plea after withdrawing an insanity defense and the state dropped the third count against him. It also agreed to not sentence him as a prison release or felony offender.
“If a jury would have found them innocent, he would have just went to a psychiatric facility, but there was no guarantee of whether it be six months or 20 years. So the plea deal is the safest bet for you know, not only for me, but for society in general. He could do it again,” Norris said.
The Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department paramedics were stabbed in an ambulance while they were bringing Harris to UF Health.
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One of the paramedics, Vincent Harper, was named firefighter of the year, for actions that helped save the life of his colleague Norris.
“I was on (the man’s) back, trying to choke him and find the knife at the same time,” Harper said in 2020. “And I grabbed the wrong arm thinking it was in the other hand. And he bucked off of me and came with the razor knife and came across my leg.”
Eventually, the firefighters said, the attacker fell in a wheel well and the firefighters were able to pin him down until police and other rescuers arrived as backup.
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If his partner hadn’t hopped in, “I would be dead right now,” Norris said. “There’s not a doubt in my mind.”
President of the Jacksonville Firefighters Association Randy Wyse said the two men continue to live with this traumatic experience.
“To have two brothers go through what they went through and almost lose their lives you expect something very harsh to be done,” Wyse said. “What a shock it was to have these two fine firefighters rendering aid to an individual and for that individual to just turn on them for no reason and start stabbing them was shocking.”
Wyse said the two men are tough. They see the area where it happened every day and are still working together.
“I’m not really happy with it but in the situation that was laid in front of the state attorney in our members to make a decision to say that’s where we think it needs to be and that’s all we can get, I think it was the right move,” Wyse said.