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Dustin Rush had just turned 42 at the time of the shooting. Court records show that previously pleaded guilty to robbery resulting in bodily injury, a felony charge.
NOCATEE, Fla. — First Coast News is learning more about the man shot and killed by St. Johns County deputies at a park in Nocatee. The man, Dustin Rush had just turned 42 the day of the fatal shooting.
St. Johns County Sheriff Robert Hardwick said Rush was a suspect in a burglary that took place at a storage facility around 6 a.m. Deputies arrested 37-year-old Crystal O’Neal at the storage facility and began looking for Rush after learning he was her accomplice. O’Neal is currently facing 14 felony charges, according to the jail records.
Rush was found in a truck under a bridge when a deputy confronted him; that encounter was captured in cell phone video obtained by First Coast News.
Hardwick said Rush fled in the truck, leading to a chase that ended when deputies used defensive maneuvers to stop Rush, who crashed in a retention pond at Davis Park.
According to police, Rush ran out of the truck with a handgun and took a defensive stance between cars in the parking lot. Deputies then engaged him.
”There were multiple rounds that were fired. We have a lot of work to do to determine, how many if any rounds he fired. We know for a fact he was armed with a firearm which was a pistol,” Hardwick said.
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Court records show that in 2014 in the state of Indiana, Rush pleaded guilty to robbery resulting in bodily injury which is a felony charge. He was sentenced to 14 years but was placed in a community transition program in 2016.
Multiple youth athlete events were being held at the park, with hundreds of children and families walking past the crime scene after deputies secured the area.
“We just evacuated, chaos, everyone was running to the field house. And we were locked down for a while,” Jedrick Vitell, who was playing soccer at the time of the shooting, said. “I’m still trying to process it, I don’t know how I’m going to come back to play or to ref again. It’s just, thinking that this could happen, week after week.”
The sheriff said the deputy who confronted Rush under the bridge was the only member of law enforcement injured during the incident. That deputy’s injuries were described as lacerations on her arm.
