A Nassau sheriff's deputy shot and killed a woman pointing what appeared to be a rifle in the underbrush outside her home early Wednesday, the Sheriff's Office said.
Sheriff Bill Leeper said the deputy fired at Donna Dale, 47, when he saw a rifle in the darkness of a palmetto thicket in Hilliard.
"He shot one time, striking her, and she died at the scene," Leeper said. "As it turns out, the weapon she had was a BB-style rifle. However, it looked like a real rifle in the dark. Unfortunately, it's apparent she wanted deputies to shoot her by her statements and by her actions."
Deputies were called to the home on Barbara Lane just after 2 a.m. in reference to someone threatening to kill herself with a knife, Leeper said. When they arrived at the home just east of the Florida/Georgia border,, they learned that the woman had "stormed" out of the house and was somewhere on the property off the dirt road, he said.
Using night vision goggles, a deputy found her behind some thick palmetto bushes on the property, Leeper said. They tried to get her to surrender peacefully. "But she wouldn't, saying that she had nothing to live for and they would have to shoot her," Leeper said.
As a deputy moved bushes to see her better with flashlights, they saw she had a "dark-barreled rifle" and backed off. She stuck the rifle barrel in her mouth and told the deputies they would have to "do it," Leeper said. Deputies again tried to get her to give up, but she appeared to point the rifle at them and was shot, Leeper said.
Leeper said deputies had been at the home on another domestic issue a month ago, when Dale told her family she wanted to die and raised a pair of scissors at her father. She was involuntarily committed for psychiatric care after that incident, he said.
Dale also was cited for careless driving after a one-car crash late Tuesday on Florida 200 near Brady Point Road, uninjured after she veered off the road, Leeper said.
The deputy who fired, with seven years' experience, is on administrative leave as the Florida Department if Law Enforcement and State Attorney's Office investigate, Leeper said. This was the deputy's first shooting in the department.
No deputies were injured, Leeper said.
This is the first deputy shooting this year in Nassau County, with none reported last year and one in 2021, the Sheriff's Office said.
