JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 Heartbreak and disbelief spread through a quiet Mandarin neighborhood Monday evening after a man was found shot to death inside a garage on the 11000 block of Rustic Green Court.<\/p>\n
Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office investigators told News4JAX they found the middle-aged man around 5 p.m. Officers have not identified the victim publicly and said no suspect has been named, though two people are being questioned as part of the ongoing investigation.<\/p>\n
Tuesday morning, neighbors and family members spoke with News4JAX\u2019s reporter Briana Brownlee and photojournalist Jesse Hanson and said the shooting had shaken their normally peaceful community.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know the fellow who got shot, but it\u2019s a sad thing,\u201d said Ernie Moreland, who\u2019s lived in the neighborhood for 20 years. \u201cIt\u2019s not the kind of thing you hear about here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moreland described the area as friendly and close-knit \u2014 a place where people know each other and look out for one another.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say this is a middle-income neighborhood, and everybody is nice and friendly and neighborly as far as I know,\u201d he said. \u201cI never knew of anything that would lead to something as violent as this. But I hope everyone is fine and can get over this.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the victim\u2019s family, the grief is still raw. His brother-in-law, Zachary Schwnkey, described him as a man devoted to his family and community.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a good man, but even a better father,\u201d Schwnkey said. \u201cHe helped me recognize, just with my background of having no father, barely a mother at the time before she passed, how important a parental figure is, and he showed me how I can be a cornerstone. He cared about his community and the kids better than I knew. He was just so caring.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schwnkey said he learned of the shooting from his nephew and rushed to find out what had happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was at home, I heard the news from my nephew who lives with me, and we just came here as soon as possible and just waited for everything to be done,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added that the victim deeply loved his family and was committed to being a strong presence in their lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey loved each other very deeply, had a kid together, and he loved her to the world and end,\u201d Schwnkey said. \u201cThere\u2019s not much more that I can say than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Detectives are still investigating and have not shared what might have led up to the shooting. Police are asking anyone with information to contact the Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office or Crime Stoppers at 1-866-845-TIPS.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 Heartbreak and disbelief spread through a quiet Mandarin neighborhood Monday evening after a man was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[23406,29,116,23404,118,117,1415,266,23405,23403],"class_list":["post-33369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-crime-investigation","tag-florida-news","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-crime","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jacksonville-sheriffs-office","tag-local-news","tag-mandarin-neighborhood","tag-mandarin-shooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33369","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=33369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}