Jacob Depetris

Jacob Shawn DePetris was a 29-year-old father who, according to his family, loved his three-year-old daughter more than anything in the world. His father, Jimmy DePetris, described his son as a loving man who was struggling with severe depression and the pain of a recent breakup. Jacob, a Caucasian man, had worked at a local overhead door company in Jacksonville, Florida, and had a history of non-violent offenses. In the weeks leading up to his death, he was distraught over the end of his five-year relationship and the fear of losing access to his daughter. His father later found a journal Jacob had kept, which detailed his despair and included what amounted to a suicide letter, expressing that he didn't want to live if his "world was taken away." Friends also knew he was troubled; one recalled Jacob saying that if he ever got into trouble with the law, he wouldn't go to jail but would "make the police take his life."

The crisis reached its peak in the pre-dawn hours of Thursday, October 20, 2016. Sometime between 5:45 and 6:00 a.m., Jacob drove to a home on Shims Road in Jacksonville’s Oceanway neighborhood where the family of his ex-girlfriend, Alyssa Bryant, lived. Armed with a shotgun and a bottle of liquor, he was looking for Alyssa and their daughter, neither of whom were there. He fired the shotgun through a side door window to get inside, waking Alyssa’s mother, Margaret Bryant, and her husband, Kevin Watts. Jacob confronted the couple, threatening them and demanding to know where Alyssa was. The couple retreated to their bedroom, and as Watts escaped to call the police, Jacob kicked down the door to the master bathroom where Margaret was hiding.

Inside the bathroom, Jacob put the shotgun to Margaret’s head and pulled the trigger, but the weapon only clicked; it had misfired. He dragged her through the house, hitting her and trying to fix the jammed gun. At one point, bullets fell out, and he reloaded, putting the gun to her chest and pulling the trigger again. For a second time, it failed to fire. He then forced her outside onto the porch, intending to fix the gun and shoot her. As they reached the front gate, Margaret saw an opportunity and ran to her mother’s house on the same property, from where she also called the police.

While outside, Jacob made a final, desperate phone call to his father at 6:54 a.m. "I just kicked the door in and shot my shotgun," he told him. His father pleaded with him to put the weapon down and wait for the police. Jacob, emotional, refused, saying, "They took away my whole world and I don’t want to live anymore... I want them to kill me." As he spoke, he saw the police arriving. "Here they come," he said, and hung up. Witnesses saw him with the shotgun in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other.

The first officer on the scene was Howard Smith, a 27-year veteran of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. He found Jacob in the yard and shone his cruiser’s spotlight on him. Officer Smith repeatedly ordered Jacob to drop the shotgun. According to both the officer and witnesses, Jacob refused. "Not tonight," he reportedly said, and then raised the weapon toward the officer. Officer Smith fired his service weapon twice, striking Jacob in the torso. Another officer who arrived on the scene attempted to render first aid, but Jacob DePetris died there in the yard.

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office investigated the fatal shooting. Undersheriff Pat Ivey stated that Jacob’s shotgun was a "fully functioning proven weapon" and that its repeated misfires were like "divine intervention" that saved lives. Based on witness statements and the circumstances, police concluded that Officer Smith’s use of deadly force was justified and that he had saved lives. Jacob's own father, while grieving, agreed that the shooting was justified, saying, "If my son would've listened to me, if he would've dropped the gun, if he had laid down, he'd still be alive."

In the aftermath, those involved were left to grapple with the tragedy from different perspectives. Margaret Bryant, the woman Jacob had terrorized, said she prayed for him but described him as a "troubled man" who had stalked her daughter after she ended their relationship. She believed his actions were not about his daughter but about his inability to handle the breakup. Conversely, Jimmy DePetris did not want his son remembered as a monster. He shared Jacob’s story to raise awareness about the devastating effects of depression, which he called a "real killer." He gave his son's journal to detectives, hoping to show that Jacob was suicidal and had been tormented by his ex-girlfriend's family. As of October 2016, the investigation by the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office was ongoing.