A startling incident occurred when a Florida sheriff’s deputy opened fire on his own vehicle with a suspect inside after believing he heard a gunshot. Bodycam footage of the shooting, which took place in November, was recently released and has been going viral on social media.

The incident underscores ongoing concerns about police use of force and the razor-thin margin for error in high-stress law enforcement situations.

The story unfolded in Fort Walton Beach, where Deputy Jesse Hernandez and other officers responded to reports of a stolen vehicle. They arrested Marquis Jackson, who was suspected of the crime, and restrained him in the police car.

What followed was a wild course of events after Hernandez heard a sound caused by an acorn.

When Hernandez was approaching the passenger side rear door, an acorn could be seen striking the top of his patrol car, according to the internal investigation report from January. Hernandez perceived the sound to be a gunshot and believed he had been hit, it said.

He yelled “Shots fired!” multiple times, fell to the ground, rolled and began firing his semi-automatic pistol into the patrol car, according to the body camera video of the incident.

Roberts asks where the shots are coming from, to which Hernandez answers, "In the car."

"Jesse, are you OK?" Roberts yells shortly after. Hernandez is heard in the video saying, "I'm hit! I'm hit!"

After she saw Hernandez open fire, Roberts responded with gunshots of her own.

"He shot through the car," Hernandez said as he crawled on his hands and knees to find cover behind a parked vehicle.

“I’m good. I feel weird, but I’m good,” he added.

A Florida sheriff’s deputy has resigned after he mistook a falling acorn for a gunshot, claimed he had been hit by a bullet, and fired at an unarmed, handcuffed Black man sitting in the back of his police car. Fortunately, Marquis Jackson in the back of the car was not injured. pic.twitter.com/0i11nYx1cl

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) February 14, 2024

Miraculously, Jackson was unharmed. In a Facebook post after the incident, he described how he was forced to “lean over and play dead” to avoid being shot. “All I could depend on was God!” He also detailed what happened just after the shooting:

At that moment, I saw just how many officers there were. But the image I can’t get out of my head is seeing how bad my mom was hurt/crying right before I got into the ambulance! While in the ambulance they cut off all my clothes to continue checking for injuries. I was taken to Fort Walton Beach Medical Center still handcuffed . They then took me to okaloosa county courthouse to book me into the system by taking pictures & fingerprints. I continued to ask every officer I saw what was I being charged with and they all said the same thing… “ I don’t know, we’re waiting on more info”. I sat in the cell for hours! Eventually an officer told me I’m free to go and that I am not charged with anything.

While he was not physically harmed, Jackson described the psychological toll the ordeal took on him. “I haven’t been the same since, and I don’t think this feeling I have will ever change.”

An internal investigation by the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office determined that Hernandez’s use of force was “not objectively reasonable,” which led to the officer’s resignation. No criminal charges were filed against Hernandez.

Sheriff Eric Aden expressed relief that Jackson was not injured.

Sheriff Eric Aden said he realizes the situation was “traumatic” for the suspect, and his office has incorporated the shooting into training for other deputies.

He also said he does not believe that Hernandez acted with malice.

“Though his actions were ultimately not warranted, we do believe he felt his life was in immediate peril and his response was based off the totality of circumstances surrounding this fear,” Aden said.

The incident, while not resulting in physical injury, does raise concerns about the training and judgment of law enforcement officers and serves as a cautionary tale showing how easily a situation can escalate.