JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The mother of Daniel Neal, a man who the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said was shot and killed by a detective who was responding to a reported armed robbery in 2021, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit, according to court documents obtained Tuesday by News4JAX.
Investigators said Neal, 37, was shot and killed by Detective J.G. Bennett at an apartment complex on Old Kings Road South in February of 2021. The Sheriff’s Office said police were at the apartment complex as part of a stakeout due to a string of recent robberies.
In June of the same year, the Sheriff’s Office released body camera footage from the shooting that shows an officer pursuing Neal on foot and ordering him to surrender. Moments later, two gunshots ring out as Neal climbs the front steps of an apartment building. He drops what appears to be a handgun and collapses.
The State Attorney’s Office for the Fourth Judicial Circuit ruled the shooting justifiable in February 2022.
The lawsuit, filed against Bennett and JSO, states that the shooting was “without justification or provocation,” and that JSO failed to provide prompt medical care to Neal, who died the next day at a hospital. The lawsuit says Neal wasn’t pointing a gun at the officer when he was shot, and that the apartment building he was trying to enter is where he lived.
The lawsuit further states that Neal’s death occurred due to Bennett’s “unnecessary and excessive use of force and negligence” and in keeping with a JSO pattern “of using deadly force disproportionately on African-American citizens.”
The lawsuit also contends that when Bennett arrested Neal’s brother three months earlier, he told the brother words to the effect that “Detective Bennet would be coming after someone he loved or his family.”