Florida deputies shot and killed a man last week who threatened to kill a neighbor and then held a woman at knifepoint inside his apartment.
Jason Douglas Paul, 47, called 911 himself on Thursday in the midst of a dispute with his neighbor at a Tampa apartment complex, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office said. When they arrived, they met with Paul, who “was acting erratically and threatening to kill his neighbor.”
“He’s lucky I didn’t grab ahold of him and f****** kill him,” Paul says in body camera footage released by the sheriff’s office. “I would’ve killed him on self-defense if I would’ve got a hold of him”
The deputy tells the agitated man to “relax.”
“You tell him that,” Paul says. “Because I would’ve got a hold of him I would’ve snapped his neck and he would have been dead!”
Paul goes into his apartment while the deputies talk with the neighbor, and the deputies decide to take Paul in for a mental health evaluation under the Baker Act. He continues to shout and scream, and refuses to let the deputy in when he asks to come in.
“I didn’t do nothing to you,” he shouts, while ripping down the blinds in the front window. Next, Paul appears with a knife in his hand and refuses deputies’ requests to put it down. Then a woman screams.
The deputies break out the window and climb through Christmas decorations in the window and head to the back of the apartment, where they woman is still screaming. With garland hanging over his arm, the deputy again tells Paul to put down the knife, but he again refuses and the deputy fires.
Deputies rush the screaming woman out of the apartment and rendered aid to Paul, who was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.
The sheriff’s office said the deputy who fired the fatal shot had no prior use of force investigations since joining the department in February. Paul, however, had a criminal history
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the shooting.
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[Featured image: Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office]
