St. Cloud police officer cleared in fatal shooting
St. Cloud police Officer Devin Dunn was cleared by an internal probe into last year’s fatal shooting of Jah’Sean Hodge, who was gunned down after leaving the scene of a brutal stabbing shirtless and covered in blood.
The decision made by the St. Cloud Police Department in January and obtained by the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday concludes months of investigation into the May 5 shooting by local authorities and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
On Dec. 30, the Orange-Osceola State Attorney’s Office issued a letter to the agency declining to charge Dunn for shooting the 21-year-old after a review found he acted in self-defense when an unarmed Hodge charged at him.
“There is no evidence in this instance that Officer Dunn used poor judgment, committed intentional misconduct or acted with any degree of malice or prejudice,” the letter said. Dunn has since returned to active duty.
Dunn and other officers arrived at a Georgia Avenue neighborhood that day following reports that a 9-year-old girl was stabbed inside an apartment. Hodge was outside shirtless and bloody when confronted by officers, partly from what a medical examiner said were likely self-inflicted stab wounds.
Body camera footage released months after the shooting showed Hodge with his hands balled into fists and demanding that officers to shoot him before charging Dunn, who shot Hodge four times after a stun gun fired by another officer failed to stop him. Hodge was pronounced dead at the scene.
Dunn told FDLE investigators he didn’t know whether Hodge was armed when he charged him, according to a summary of the incident the agency provided to the State Attorney’s Office, which the Sentinel obtained through a public record request.
“I didn’t know if he had a weapon or not,” Dunn told investigators. “He gets within reach of me and my firearm. I am in fear that he is going to cause me harm, take my firearm and kill me. I have no other choice but to discharge my firearm four times until he fell on the ground.”
The 9-year-old was taken to the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, where she survived multiple injuries to her face and abdomen and pointed to Hodge as her attacker, according to police and investigation documents.
There was initial confusion as to whether Hodge was the child’s attacker in the week following the shooting, after the girl’s mother, Veronica Snyder, told the Sentinel and other news outlets someone else had stabbed her daughter and Hodge had intervened to protect her.
A week later, SCPD said Hodge, who was close to Snyder’s family, was “unequivocally” the suspect responsible for the stabbing, including in its statement a quote from Snyder.
“We finally got answers, and I have a lot to accept,” the statement quoted Snyder as saying. “But I just want to say the St. Cloud Police Department did their job. Let’s just not make this any worse than it is.”
It’s still unclear why Hodge attacked her.
The shooting also sparked small protests in St. Cloud calling for the termination and prosecution of Dunn, amid a summer of nationwide uprisings against police brutality and systemic racism.
A since-discontinued GoFundMe campaign and donation drive raised more than $3,000 to help Snyder and her family find a new place to live and to provide school supplies for the child.