Woman with gun barrel to her mouth killed in confrontation with Nassau County deputies
A Nassau County deputy shot and killed a 47-year-old woman who said she had nothing to live for and put the barrel of a rifle in her mouth before appearing to point it in his direction Wednesday morning, according to Sheriff Bill Leeper.
Deputies tried to talk Donna Rene Dale out of doing anything drastic, but she at least twice said they would have to kill her, Leeper said. The rifle turned out to be a BB gun.
It started with a call about 2:15 a.m. to Barbara Lane, a dead-end dirt road with minimal homes in Hilliard where she was said to be threatening to kill herself.
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She also had gone outside on the property where there are several trees and thick bushes and palmettos to hide, and it was very dark, the sheriff said. Deputies could hear her moving but couldn't pinpoint her location. So one of the deputies retrieved night vision goggles and found her in some palmetto bushes near the driveway.
Deputies tried to talk her out peacefully but she refused. One of them pulled back the bushes so they could see her better with flashlights and saw she had the rifle. So they backed up, but that's when she put the weapon to her mouth and rejected any other option. They continued to try to calm the situation down. But it only escalated as she further wielded the rifle and Deputy Christian Copher shot her one time, Leeper said.
Copher has been with the department since 2015 and this was his first shooting.
Leeper said Dale also was involved in a vehicle crash about 9:15 p.m. Tuesday on Florida 200 outside of Fernandina Beach. She had veered off the road and struck a tree but wasn't hurt. She was cited for careless driving.
The Sheriff's Office also had been called to the same home about a month ago for another domestic incident where she stated to family she wanted to die. When a deputy responded, she grabbed a pair of scissors and raised them in an aggressive manner yelling at her father. A deputy had to incapacitate her with a Taser. Leeper said she had to be institutionalized in a mental health facility under the state's Baker Act.
Leeper said it's a difficult and dangerous situation for everyone and no one wants it to end that way.
"It's hard to say what's going through people's minds when you respond to situations like this," he said. "Deputies have to protect themselves, and that's what they were doing. She put them in that position. What can be done, I don't know, but when we're called, we respond to try to handle the situation the best we can. If there's time to get other resources involved, we would do that, but this was not that situation."
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He said it's tragic for everyone but he's thankful no one else was hurt.
Court records also show Dale had a domestic battery arrest after a family member was struck during an incident in November. That's also when Joseph Dale, whom she filed for child support in 2021, sought a domestic violence injunction for protection against her.
Officer-involved shootings in Nassau County
It's the first law enforcement shooting reported this year in Northeast Florida. Times-Union records do not show any for Nassau County last year.
However on July 31, 2021, another situation with someone threatening to harm himself also was shot and killed by a deputy. A family member had called the Sheriff’s Office saying Adam S. Moser was threatening to kill himself at the home on Diamond Street in Yulee.
A deputy was able to speak with the man through a small window of a side door, but the 39-year-old became agitated and cursed at him. He then told the deputy to “get ready” and burst through the door with a large butcher knife in each hand, the Sheriff's Office said at the time. The deputy opened fire killing him.
Crystal Starling Mcclinton: Son seeks answers after troubled mother killed by Nassau deputy during standoff
Another suicidal case that led to a shooting happened on Oct. 6, 2020, at a property on Ruby Drive in Hilliard. It began with Crystal Starling Mcclinton getting into a confrontation with a woman at her ex-husband's home over domestic and custody issues. She eventually returned to her camper on her father's property. She was very upset, intoxicated and making threats to kill herself. The father told deputies she had a gun in her mouth at one point, the Sheriff's Office said at the time.
SWAT officers were sent after she barricaded herself inside the camper with three weapons reported inside. The 48-year-old threatened to kill herself and "to blow everyone away on the street," at one point stepping outside waving an AR-15. While speaking with a negotiator by telephone, she said she saw the helmet of a deputy in the woods and was going to shoot him. When the Sheriff's Office said she pointed the gun at that officer, he fired one shot at Mcclinton and killed her.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Nassau County deputy shoots and kills armed suicidal woman
