JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Jacksonville Sheriffs Office responded to five different shootings in about a 12-hour period. Starting Saturday night into Sunday morning. The incident locations are below:
- 1100 block of Hart Street (around 10 p.m. Saturday, no specific time)
- Seawalk Trail North (12:49 a.m.)
- 1600 block of Art Museum Drive (1:10 a.m.)
- 9400 block of Sunbeam Road (4 a.m.)
- 1040 Golfair Boulevard (6:30 a.m.)
Hunter Worthington lives on the Westside where one of the shootings took place and he believes the gun violence is getting worse.
“There’s a lot of shootings me and my wife talk about it all the time. I'm just like wow what is this Chicago," said Worthington.
John Guns, pastor of St. Paul Church of Jacksonville, says as a city we have work to do.
“No mater what side of people live on. No matter if they find themselves living behind gates. It doesn’t matter. This is about a city that is face with some real challenges," said Guns.
Crime analyst Mark Baughman says with a fair share of shootings within a short period of time in a major metropolitan city can tax the resources of the sheriff’s office.
“The fact that we had a lot of rain within this 12 hour period also affects the crime scenes and it keeps your forensic people in processing those scenes. so, it slows up the process with also dealing with multiple shootings at one time," said Baughman.
Baughman says with strained resources, we could continue to see a rise in crime.
“It stands the reason that the sheriff has made it abundantly clear even though it’s the largest budget of the sheriff’s office within the city budget we are still down manpower wise. So when you are lacking patrol officers that aren’t out there for the omnipresence or patrolling those areas that does deter crime," said Baughman.