Plant City police shoot, kill driver in car pursue following bizarre nine hundred eleven call
Thursday, July 6, two thousand seventeen 9:51am
PLANT CITY — What embarked as a bizarre call for help ended when two police officers shot a man to death as he appeared to reach for something in his car, authorities say.
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Plant City police received a nine hundred eleven call about five a.m. Thursday from a man who claimed someone had been following him for two hours, said Plant City Police Sgt. Alfred Van Duyne.
About thirty minutes later, as officers attempted to locate the caller, the driver of a speeding black Nissan Altima attempted to run a marked police cruiser off the road and crashed into a ditch in front of a BP gas station at Park Road and Alsobrook Street, northeast of Alexander Street and Airport Road, Van Duyne said.
The man, later identified as 35-year-old Jesus Cervantes of Plant City, got out and overlooked directions from officers to demonstrate his forearms, Van Duyne said. Instead, Van Duyne said, Cervantes “made an attempt to go inwards the driver’s side rear door to retrieve an unknown object.”
“This caused these responding officers to fear for their life and as a result, two officers discharged their firearms at the driver,” Van Duyne said.
Cervantes was shot a number of times and died at the scene. No officers were injured.
The names of the officers who fired their weapons were not released. They were placed on routine administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Hillsborough County State Attorney’s Office.
Investigators found a phone in the car that they believe Cervantes used to make the nine hundred eleven call, Van Duyne said. No one else was in the car when it crashed. No other information about what investigators found in the car, and whether the man had a weapon, was released.
As Van Duyne briefed reporters, the Nissan remained where it had stopped against a grassy swale. The crumpled front bumper dangled underneath the car’s open rubber hood. Cervantes’s assets lay on the ground beside the car, a brown work boot peeking out from under a white sheet.
When the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office transferred the nine hundred eleven call, Cervantes was in the area of Turkey Creek Road and State Road 574, Van Duyne said. Dispatchers were incapable to get more information from Cervantes, but he left the line open. The dispatchers could hear a masculine voice in the background grunting, blubbering and screaming. The call later disconnected.
As police worked to determine the cell phone’s location, an officer encountered the speeding Nissan. Cervantes attempted to run the officer off the road, “which is an aggravated brunt,” Van Duyne said. He didn’t have details on where that happened.
Police followed and used stop jams to deflate the Nissan’s tires, but Cervantes kept driving west on Coronet Road, which turns into Alsobrook at Park. Just after the Nissan traveled through the intersection, Cervantes evidently lost control and the sedan veered off the road and into the ditch in front of the BP station.
It was still unclear if Cervantes was actually being followed.
“Part of our investigation is to determine what may have led this person to call,” Van Duyne said. “We don’t know if there are outside contributors to this incident. We’re embarking from this crime scene location and working backward.”
Van Duyne said none of the officers at the scene were wearing bod cameras and there were no dash cameras in their patrol cars.
Investigators were checking to see if the BP store was tooled with cameras that would’ve captured anything useful, but Van Duyne did not have an update on that effort Thursday.
Plant City Police had encountered Cervantes twice before, Van Duyne said.
On July 25, 2010, Cervantes was arrested on charges of domestic battery and aggravated attack with a deadly weapon after attacking a woman at his Plant City mobile home, according to his arrest report. Cervantes struck the woman’s arm before grabbing the neck corset of her T-shirt and throwing her to the ground, sitting on her tummy and holding a knife to her mouth while telling, “I will kill you,” his arrest report says.
The very first charge was diminished to improper display of a weapon but Cervantes was never prosecuted. He also was not prosecuted on a 2nd domestic battery charge earlier this year. Cervantes was arrested on Fresh Years Day after punching his brother-in-law in the face while the two were talking in his carport, and later told police “Yeah, I hit him. He was talking s—,” his arrest report said.
Cervantes was born in Mexico, according to a Hillsborough County marriage license from 2012. His family of four daughters declined to speak with reporters Thursday afternoon.