ST. CLOUD, Fla. – The St. Cloud Police Department on Wednesday released a batch of evidence showing the moments that led up to a man being fatally shot after he stabbed and beat a 9-year-old girl.
The fatal officer-involved shooting happened May 5 near Georgia Avenue and 3rd Street and since then, there has been online speculation that someone other than 21-year-old Jah’Sean Hodge attacked the child.
The department refuted those rumors shortly after the shooting and did so again on Wednesday while releasing graphic body camera video, up-close photos of the girl’s extensive injuries, pictures of the bloodied weapons used during the attack and more evidence.
News 6 has reviewed the photos and videos and made the decision not to publish them due to their graphic nature.
[RELATED: 911 calls show confusion over 9-year-old girl’s injuries prior to St. Cloud officer fatally shooting man | St. Cloud police: Man fatally shot by officer was sole suspect in ‘violent assault’]
Body camera video from Officer Devin Dunn shows Hodge at first walking toward the patrol vehicle while shirtless with blood on his body and then, ignoring the officers’ commands to “stay right there,” he begins to charge at Dunn.
Dunn fired his gun four times as Hodge was running toward him, causing the suspect to collapse to the ground.
After the shooting, Dunn starts breathing heavily and muttering expletives to himself while he and another officer who was also on the scene and deployed his Taser begin providing aid.
That second officer’s nine-minute body camera video shows first responders desperately performing CPR while addressing Hodge’s numerous injuries.
“He jumped. He came through both of these houses and started charging us as soon we we got out of the car,” Dunn said.
Before the shooting, St. Cloud officers said they received multiple 911 calls from family members of the 9-year-old girl who said the child was injured and bleeding from her head and they didn’t know what happened.
″All I know is my girlfriend’s daughter needs an ambulance,” one witness said in a 911 call. “She’s bleeding from the head. She was upstairs by herself.”
Around the same time, witnesses in a golf cart saw Hodge leave the girl’s apartment while covered in blood and acting erratically, records show.
A neighbor saw Hodge sit down on a driveway on Georgia Avenue and asked if he needed help but Hodge replied, “no” and started running through the backyards of homes, eventually discarding his bloody shirt in a screened-in porch area shortly before his encounter with Dunn and the other officer.
Meanwhile, police said the 9-year-old girl was taken to a hospital where doctors discovered she had cuts to her neck and face, the letter J carved on her forehead and multiple fractured bones on her face.
Hodge’s DNA was found under her fingernails and both her blood and Hodge’s blood were found on the knife she was stabbed with, the barbell she was bludgeoned with and the T-shirt Hodge was wearing, according to the report. Additional forensic testing found that Hodge had cannabinoids in his system at the time of his death.
In a recorded interview with the victim, the girl said that she was in the living room when she noticed Hodge had a knife with a black handle in his hands.
“I said, ‘Why do you have a knife in your hand?' and then he stabbed me,” the victim said.
The child said she didn’t know why Hodge attacked her and all he said was, “It was you” but she didn’t know what he meant by that.
“He was choking me while he was killing me,” the 9-year-old said.
In the audio, she repeatedly identified Hodge as the one who hurt her.
Crime scene photos show the knife stained red, a barbell with bloody prints on the handle and blood splattered on the walls and carpet.
St. Cloud Police Chief Pete Gauntlett said he hopes the release of evidence will help members of the community understand what the victim endured.
“This case is troubling. A child was brutally beaten, stabbed and left to die. While she has survived, she will carry the emotional and physical scars of her experience for the rest of her life. She has proven to be a very strong little girl in that she clearly described in detail what happened to her, including identifying her attacker,” Gauntlett said in a news release.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the officer-involved shooting, which is standard procedure.