Deputies in Hillsborough County, Florida, had to break through a window and shoot a man who was holding a woman at knifepoint, as shown in body camera footage released by the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.
The incident occurred when authorities responded to a 911 call about a disturbance between neighbors on Camden Street in Tampa around 9 p.m. on a Thursday. Upon arrival, deputies encountered a man named Jason Douglas Paul, 47, who was behaving erratically on his front porch. The sheriff’s office shared a two-minute segment of the body camera video recorded by one of the deputies.
The footage shows deputies breaking through a window and Christmas decorations to intervene and stop the man from harming the woman with the knife he was holding. The swift actions of the deputies helped rescue the woman from potential danger.
“He’s lucky I didn’t grab ahold of him and f—ing kill him,” Paul yells. “I would’ve killed him on self-defense if I would’ve got a hold of him”
The deputy tells Paul to “relax,” but Paul isn’t having it.
“You tell him that,” Paul screams. “Because I would’ve got a hold of him I would’ve snapped his neck and he would have been dead!”
Paul ended up going inside his home and locked the door, preventing deputies from getting inside, the video shows.
“Just calm down OK,” one of the deputies told him through the window, which is decorated with Christmas lights and garland.
Paul then rips down the blinds of his front window.
“I ain’t do nothing to you,” he shouts.
It was at this point that deputies can see Paul holding a knife through the window.
“Jason, just put down the knife,” a deputy said.
Paul then goes toward a back bedroom, out of view, and a woman starts screaming. Deputy John Howes and other law enforcement officers break through the window. With a piece of garland still draped around his arm as he holds his gun, Howes heads toward the back bedroom and encounters Paul with his arm around the woman while holding a knife.
“Put the knife down, right now,” Howes commands. Another deputy orders Paul to do the same, but Paul doesn’t do it.
Paramedics rushed Paul to a hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead.
“Our deputies sprang to action when confronted with a situation where someone’s life was in immediate danger,” Sheriff Chad Chronister said in a statement. “Our deputies are trained to protect innocent lives, and that’s what they did.”
Howes joined the agency in February. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement will investigate the shooting.
