after five young people were shot during a weekend takeover in Jacksonville Beach.<\/a><\/p>\nInvestigators say the shooting happened Saturday night near Beach Boulevard and 2nd Street \u2014 close to the Seawalk Pavilion \u2014 where a separate festival was taking place.<\/p>\n
Five people between the ages of 15 and 18 were injured.<\/p>\n
Thomas Zabattiere, who manages Beachside Seafood, says he heard the gunfire and watched as people rushed inside his restaurant to get away from the chaos.<\/p>\n
\u201cCustomers started to run inside the building and when the door opened, you just hear gunshots for about 10 or 12. You know, a lot at once,\u201d Zabattiere said.<\/p>\n
Zabattiere says the violence is becoming more concerning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re getting into a lot more trouble, and since firearms and everything is a lot more accessible and a lot cooler now than it was back then and it\u2019s getting more and more dangerous anywhere\u201d<\/p>\n
He worries repeated incidents like this could damage Jacksonville Beach\u2019s reputation if the violence continues.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Jacksonville Beach Police Commander Thomas Crumley says officers are aware of another possible gathering planned for February 28.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will be a large police presence, and we plan on talking to those who are promoting that sooner rather than later.\u201d Crumley said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The department is increasing visibility and preparing for spring break with extra patrols. Crumley has a message for takeover organizers:<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely encourage them not to do it because of the violence and the criminal activity that seems to follow those types of events,” Crumley said. “People gather on the beach all the time; they don\u2019t have takeovers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police say their goal is to prevent another violent weekend as the busy spring and summer months approach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five young people were hurt in a Jacksonville Beach shooting, raising safety concerns as police prepare for another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-167802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167802","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=167802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}