NOCATEE, Fla. — The St. Johns County Sheriff's Office released new body worn camera video showing two additional perspectives from the deadly deputy-involved shooting.
The shooting happened on Nov. 4, 2023 at Davis Park in Nocatee. Hundreds of kids and their families were at the park that morning.
The new videos show the perspective of the two deputies who fired shots at Dustin Rush. Rush was a suspect in a burglary that happened earlier that morning. He lead deputies on a chase to the park where he crashed his truck into a retention pond, and then took off running into the parking lot.
The first video starts with the deputy driving to the park in his patrol car. At 8:37 a.m., he got out of the car and ran through the parking lot looking for Rush. Someone over his radio said the "suspect is armed."
Seconds later, the first round of gunshots could be heard. The deputy continued running towards the sound of gunshots, and that is when the second deputy could be seen in the video. The deputy can be heard yelling at Rush to "drop the gun."
After yelling 'drop the gun' multiple times, both deputies can be seen firing their guns. The deputies walked over to Rush as additional deputies arrive. The entire exchange lasted less than a minute.
The second body camera video released begins right after the shooting. This shows the perspective of the deputy who was firing shots closest to Rush. According to the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office, their body worn cameras have two settings: standby mode and sleep mode. In standby mode, the previous 30 seconds are captured when activated. In sleep mode, the previous 30 seconds are not captured when activated. During the incident, the deputy thought his camera was on standby mode, but later discovered it was on sleep mode. The previous 30 seconds, which would have included the shooting, were not captured.
Once the video started recording, a deputy could be hearing saying Rush was 'shot in the head,' along with 'don't touch his gun.' Then, a supervisor arrived and asked who fired shots. Two deputies raised their hands, and they could be seen being taken away from the scene.
First Coast News Crime and Safety Expert, Mark Baughman, said it is protocol to separate law enforcement officers involved in a shooting from the others on scene.
“When the supervisor gets on scene, I think they did it, separating people, asking if everybody's okay. You could see one of the supervisors saying okay, okay. But you don't want to say much more than that until you can get somebody who actually is going to investigate, the officer involved shooting from that point on. It protects the deputies or the officers that drew the weapon and fired," Baughman explained.
Rush was flown to a hospital were he died from his injuries.
The shooting took place at a crowded park and a packed parking lot. Baughman said that, along with the challenge of being surrounded by cars, also could have played a factor in the decision to use deadly force.
"You have those cars there, you have to take into consideration there could have been people sitting in these cars. The deputies are actually looking at it, this individual, he doesn't care. He's running aimlessly anywhere. At this point, he's trying to evade the police and evade law enforcement. But the deputies, they have to be mindful of everybody and everything around them, including anybody seated in those cars," Baughman said.
The St. Johns County Sheriff's Office added they have since disabled the sleep mode setting on the body worn cameras.