Woman details shooting
Protesters demand release of video from police incident Aug. 7 at Florida Mall
Janai Jones had just walked out of Dick’s Sporting Goods at the Florida Mall with her boyfriend and two other men when she said a red Durango quickly approached them.
Suddenly, several other vehicles, including Orange County Sheriff’s Office cruisers, swarmed the group in the parking lot and deputies — some in plain clothes, others in uniform — got out, she said.
“They had guns to me and
my boyfriend’s head,” she told the Orlando Sentinel in an interview this week, the first time she has spoken publicly about what happened. “I just froze up.”
Moments later, she heard three to five gunshots. She said she turned around to see Salaythis Melvin shot and the deputies doing CPR on him.
“It all happened so fast,” said Jones, 19, who did not see Melvin get shot and said she never saw him with a gun. “I kept asking, ‘Why did they shoot him?‘”
The Aug. 7 shooting has sparked outrage, especially after an affidavit revealed that OCSO Agent James Montiel had shot Melvin in the back. His family and community activists have called for the body-worn camera footage of the incident to be released. A petition demanding the video be made public already has more than 3,000 signatures.
The Sheriff’s Office initially refused. But on Friday, the agency, in an unsigned statement, said it expects to release the footage from the shooting next week after the Florida Department of Law Enforcement — which investigates all of its deputy shootings — completes its initial interviews in the case.
In the statement, OCSO officials said Melvin’s family will first review the body camera footage before it will be released publicly.
The agency also said that it will adopt a new protocol for releasing video from deputy shootings that will “balance the interest of protecting active investigations while facilitating OCSO’s commitment to transparency.”
Earlier in the week, the Sheriff ’s Office offered a different timeline for the video release.
“When FDLE has completed its investigation, the findings will be turned over to the State Attorney’s Office for review,” Deputy Christian Marrero, an agency spokesman, said in an email on Tuesday. “Once that happens, OCSO will complete its internal investigation, and once that is complete, it will be made public.”
There have been protests demanding justice in Melvin’s killing this week outside the mall, with another on Friday when a couple of dozen people blocked traffic for a few minutes while chanting Melvin’s name and demanding justice for his killing.
“Take it to the streets, defund the police, no justice, no peace,” they shouted as cars honked and navigated around the traffic jam caused by protesters forming a chain along the crosswalk.
“It doesn’t matter what they release, the fact is a black man was gunned down while he was running for his life,” community activist Miles Mulrain told the group.
Jenna Augsburger, 22, carried a sign reading “Release the body cam footage” on one side and “Officers are not the judge and executioner” on the other.
”That’s not their job. They’re overstepping and abusing their power,” she said. “They can’t play all those roles, and running away is not a threat.”
Augsburger said she hoped the body cam footage would spark empathy for Melvin and his family upon its release.
”He should still be alive,” she said. “… I hope that more people will hear about it and that more people will get mad.”
In the arrest affidavit, deputies said Melvin ran as they approached the group.
Montiel said he saw Melvin with a hand on a gun in his waistband while running away. Montiel said he fired after Melvin looked back, which the deputy said made him fear Melvin was about to draw the weapon.
OCSO later released a photo of the gun on social media, and said it was loaded. It did not say whether Montiel was wearing a uniform.
“I was scared,” said Jones. “I just kept asking if [Melvin] was going to be OK but they wouldn’t let me near him.”
Melvin, 22, was taken to the hospital where he died the next day.
Deputies were watching the group because one of them, Jones’ boyfriend Vanshawn Sands, had a warrant for possession of a gun by a convicted felon that stemmed from a July 7 fatal shooting, court records show.
“It’s like they were waiting for us when we came outside,” Jones said. “It was so many cops. Like they had it all planned out.”
Deputies handcuffed Jones and questioned her in the back of a cruiser before letting her go, she said. They arrested Sands and the other man in the group, Christopher Bennett, both 19. Bennett, who is on probation, cut off his Florida Department of Corrections-issued monitoring device last month, authorities said.
The early July shooting happened on the 3000 block of Powers Ridge Court, just after Sands arrived to hang out with friends, according to court records. A Dodge Challenger pulled up and a front-seat passenger started shooting, investigators said.
Sands fired back, hitting and killing one of the men, records state. According to detectives, Sands initially said he grabbed the gun from someone standing in the driveway, but later admitted in an interview at Sheriff’s Office headquarters later that day that he had the weapon all day, which is illegal because he is a convicted felon.
Detectives got a warrant for the Powers Ridge Court home and found the gun. But instead of arresting him then, detectives waited until Aug. 3 to seek the warrant, which Circuit Judge Wayne Shoemaker issued the following day, records show. It’s unclear why.
“He was at the Sheriff’s Office,” Bennett’s mother, Tamara Williams, said in an interview. “Why didn’t you arrest him then? Then all this wouldn’t have happened.”
Jones said said she didn’t know Melvin, who was friends with her boyfriend. The group went to the mall to hang out and the shooting didn’t have to happen, she said.
“You don’t shoot somebody just because they have a warrant,” she said.