{"id":206225,"date":"2026-03-26T01:05:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T01:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/206225\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T01:05:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T01:05:13","slug":"jacksonville-firefighters-mourn-23-year-old-rescue-engineer-killed-in-crash-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/206225\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacksonville firefighters mourn 23-year-old rescue engineer killed in crash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Jacksonville Firefighters Death Benefit Fund announced Wednesday the death of JFRD Rescue Engineer Colton R. Tibbetts, 23, who died in a single-vehicle crash in the early morning hours of March 25, 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Tibbetts was hired July 8, 2022, as part of Recruit Class 322 and was promoted to rescue engineer on Nov. 1, 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">He was the son of recently retired Lt. Brian Tibbetts and Jody Tibbetts and came from a family of firefighters.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">A photo shared by the department shows Tibbetts with his parents and brother on Oct. 6, 2022, the night he graduated from recruit training.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Officials asked the community to keep Tibbetts\u2019 family, friends and co-workers in their thoughts and prayers as they cope with the sudden loss. Funeral arrangements will be announced once finalized.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Jacksonville Firefighters Death Benefit Fund is not an official part of the Jacksonville Fire Rescue Department (JFRD) but members must be active or retired members of the JFRD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Jacksonville Firefighters Death Benefit Fund announced Wednesday the death of JFRD Rescue Engineer Colton R. Tibbetts, 23,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[94637,94601,94599,116,28313,118,117,94636],"class_list":["post-206225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-benefit-fund","tag-brian-tibbetts","tag-colton-r-tibbetts","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-fire-rescue","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jody-tibbetts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206225","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=206225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}