Pastor Korey O\u2019Neal, who works with at-risk teens and gang members<\/a> as a partner with the sheriff\u2019s office, said more needs to be done to keep kids out of trouble. <\/p>\n\u201cJust to see everyone come out tonight, praying for the youth, it gave them hope. And we know that somebody\u2019s parent is looking at the news tonight, we know the youth is looking at the news tonight, and they\u2019re going to be inspired to make better choices,\u201d O\u2019Neal said. <\/p>\n
The incident unfolded Saturday, when hundreds of teenagers gathered in the mall parking lot. Law enforcement responded to reports of gunfire, with sirens audible as officers worked to control the situation.<\/p>\n
Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office said no one was struck by gunfire, though one unoccupied vehicle was hit. Teens scattered before officers could make arrests.<\/p>\n
News4JAX has reported on similar takeovers at Friendship Fountain and the Orange Park Mall in the past, prompting increased monitoring by Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters.<\/p>\n
Waters said, \u201cBut at the same time, we need to make sure we know what our young people are doing. It\u2019s a lot more than just the police being involved. There\u2019s a community involvement but there\u2019s a parental involvement. All that stuff needs to be a part of it. These are teenagers. If they were just meeting up to have fun that would be great. But unfortunately, they\u2019re bringing handguns, drugs. They\u2019re doing a lot of different things. And if we can capture that or we can capture them, we\u2019re going to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pastor O\u2019Neal said he plans to meet with other faith based and non-profit leaders to find solutions to the problem. <\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 Community leaders, adults and young people gathered at Friendship Fountain in Jacksonville on Thursday evening…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1039,6849,116,118,117],"class_list":["post-162046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-duval-county","tag-friendship-fountain","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}