VIERA, Fla. – The Gregory Edwards video will be made public Friday.
Brevard County Circuit Judge David Dugan recently signed off on an agreement between News 6 partner Florida Today and the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, calling for jail security footage to be released at 12:30 p.m.
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Edwards, a U.S. combat veteran, died Dec. 10, 2018, while in the custody of the Sheriff’s Office. He was arrested a day earlier by West Melbourne police outside a retail store for allegedly assaulting a charity worker. His wife, Kathleen, told arresting officers her husband was a combat veteran suffering from a PTSD episode.
Edwards resisted being booked into the Brevard County Jail Complex in Sharpes, leading to an altercation with at least seven deputies. Edwards was punched, kneed, tased, pepper-sprayed and then strapped in a restraint chair with a spit hood over his head and pepper spray still on his face. Paramedics were called after deputies later found him unresponsive in his cell. He died the next day at a local hospital.
Florida Today originally requested the surveillance video about six weeks after Edwards' death but was denied by the Sheriff’s Office, which cited security exemptions to the state’s public records law. The Sheriff’s Office said its release could endanger the safety of deputies and inmates at the jail.
Florida Today filed a lawsuit against the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office in July seeking the video. Trial was set for Oct. 27, and then rescheduled for Nov. 16 as both sides worked toward a settlement agreement that addressed the sheriff’s security concerns while making the video accessible to the public.
The agreed-upon video will allow the public to see what happened to Edwards from the moment he entered the Brevard County Jail with only certain security features being redacted.