Hundreds of people were at Davis Park in Nocatee Saturday morning for youth sports when shots rang out. People hid in a field house as deputies worked the scene.
NOCATEE, Fla. — A youth athlete, who was playing a soccer game in Davis Park when St. Johns County Sheriff’s deputies shot a man following a pursuit, describes the scene as chaotic.
“We were at the backfield, we thought it was the cross country race gun but then we realized that it wasn’t,” Jedrick Vitell, who was refereeing a soccer game at the time of the shooting, said.
According to the Sheriff, deputies shot a man following a police chase that ended at Davis Park.
The man was a suspect in a burglary that had taken place earlier in the day. When deputies confronted him, Sheriff Hardwick says the suspect “struggled” with a deputy, before taking off in a truck.
Three deputy vehicles pursued the man with the lead vehicle taking “evasive action” to stop the pursuit, causing the man’s truck to spin into a retention pond in front of the park.
Deputies said the man ran out of the truck with a gun, and police exchanged fire with him in the parking lot of Davis Park.
The man was shot by deputies and was airlifted to a hospital in critical condition, according to St. Johns Fire Rescue Department.
Hundreds of people were at the park for youth sports when those shots rang out. Jedrick Vitell heard them.
“It was like a machine gun, where you just heard it over and over again,” Vitell said.
His first thought was to get to safety and help his teammates.
“I evacuated my field, I ran over to the other fields, I was blowing my whistle as hard as I can and I’m trying to wave them all to the field house or as far away as possible,” Vitell said. “We just evacuated, chaos, everyone was running to the field house. And we were locked down for a while.”
Police shut down the park and surrounding areas as deputies secured the scene.
Vitell says he felt protected by the police response, but said he’ll remember the fear he felt during future visits to the park.
“I’m still trying to process it, I don’t know how I’m going to come back to play or to ref again. It’s just, thinking that this could happen, week after week, it scares me cause I don’t know how safe I am,” Vitell said.
No children or people were hurt at Davis Park while the shooting took place, according to deputies.
