Jacksonville, Florida — The officer involved shooting at 2200 Ernest Street on November 22nd resulted in the death of 29-years-old Tyree O’Neal, Jr. O’Neal was a two-time convicted felon. As a convicted felon O’Neal was prohibited from Legally carrying a firearm. On September 21st, 2022, a young woman was murdered in the parking lot of a hotel on Youngerman Circle. Through investigative efforts of JSO’s Homicide Unit, O’Neal was identified as the shooter and murder suspect. In the surveillance video you can see O’Neal drive into the hotel parking lot and park directly next to a silver SUV. Then O’Neal exits from the driver’s seat of his vehicle and immediately approaches the front passenger seat of the adjacent parked vehicle. Violently, he pulls a young woman from that seat and forces her behind his car. O’Neal can be seen carrying a handgun in his right hand.
The woman is unarmed. Within seconds, O’Neal shoots her multiple times at close range and kills her. He then rushes back to his car and flees the parking lot with his handgun, leaving the young woman on the ground to eventually die from multiple gunshot wounds.
During the subsequent homicide investigation crime scene detectives collected seven .40 caliber casings as evidence. Using forensic technology accessible to JSO’s Violence Reduction Section, these casings were entered into NIBIN, the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network. During their investigation, homicide detectives learned that O’Neal and the deceased victim had argued not long before he murdered her in the hotel parking lot. Two people also shared with detectives that O’Neal had confessed to murdering the young woman.
On October 26th, Detectives investigated a shooting at a gas station located in the 5400 block of Timuquana Road, in which one victim was shot and another was shot at. You can see a black SUV enter the gas station lot and drive by a vehicle parked at one of the pumps. As two men exit the parked vehicle, shots are fired from the passing SUV. One of the men draws a rifle and begins returning fire on the SUV. Upon investigation, ten .40 caliber casings were recovered at the scene and entered into NIBIN. The system revealed that the bullets being fired from the black SUV were coming from the same murder weapon used to kill the young woman in the hotel parking lot a month prior. Aware of O’Neal’s escalating violence, JSO investigators requested that officers assigned to JSO’s Special Operations Section locate O’Neal and arrest him on his outstanding warrant for violation of probation.
On November 22nd, 2022, these Criminal Apprehension officers located O’Neal at 2200 Ernest Street. Once O’Neal was outside the building on that property, these officers, outfitted in tactical uniforms, which clearly identified them as police, moved in to arrest him. Immediately O’Neal ran from the police. As he ran, officers saw him pull a rifle from underneath his sweatshirt. An officer fired at O’Neal, but he was not hit by gunfire at that time. O’Neal initially fell to the ground and for a moment complied with officer commands. However, before officers could take O’Neal into custody, he began to flee again and jumped over a nearby fence. Officers again pursued him on foot. Shortly thereafter, O’Neal entered the driver’s seat of a car and drove towards the pursuing officers.
With a vehicle within feet of ramming them, multiple officers fired on O’Neal until the car stopped and no longer posed a deadly threat to them. O’Neal died from multiple gunshot wounds shortly thereafter. Detectives recovered two firearms, a rifle and a handgun, from the location in which O’Neal had laid on the ground before fleeing and jumping over the fence. Both the rifle and the handgun were submitted for forensic firearms analysis. Through the results of this forensic analysis, JSO investigators learned that the handgun recovered from O’Neal was, in fact, the same weapon used in the September 21st murder in the hotel parking lot and the October 26th attempted murder at the gas station on Timuquana Road.
News by Breaking911
