{"id":1014019,"date":"2026-06-08T22:06:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T22:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1014019\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T22:06:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T22:06:17","slug":"jacksonville-mother-demands-answers-mental-health-reform-after-son-dies-following-mental-health-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1014019\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacksonville mother demands answers, mental health reform after son dies following mental health call"},"content":{"rendered":"

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.<\/strong> \u2013 A vigil was held at Riverview Park on Saturday evening as friends, family, and community members gathered to honor 32-year-old Rashaud Martin, a Jacksonville man who died after his mother called 911 for help during a mental health crisis.<\/p>\n

Vanessa Martin says she never wanted her son arrested. She wanted police to help him.<\/p>\n

On the night of Oct. 24, 2025, Vanessa called the Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office after Rashaud, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, began experiencing what she described as a more severe mental health episode than usual at their home. Officers responded, and Rashaud was Baker Acted and transported to a mental health facility at around 6 p.m.<\/p>\n

Hours later, just before midnight, JSO informed Vanessa that her son had died in the back of a JSO vehicle on the way to that facility.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really would love closure in this situation,\u201d Vanessa said Saturday. \u201cI would just love for them to release the body cam footage. It took a while for me to even get a death certificate or autopsy results, which weren\u2019t distributed until March, and now he died in October.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vanessa says the months-long wait for basic documentation only deepened her grief and her questions.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s just questions and answers and, you know, just respectfully \u2014 just please, please just give me the information needed so I can heal from this,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I can just learn how to cope with losing my son.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s vigil was organized by Rashaud\u2019s family in partnership with the Jacksonville Community Action Committee, a local advocacy organization that has taken up the family\u2019s call for transparency and systemic change.<\/p>\n

The event, held at 9620 E. Water St. in Jacksonville, drew community members who gathered not only to mourn but to amplify a message: mental health crises require mental health professionals, not police.<\/p>\n

Vanessa and her family are calling on the city of Jacksonville to commit to deploying trained mental health co-responders to mental health calls, a model already in use in cities across the country \u2014 rather than sending law enforcement as the first and only response.<\/p>\n

As of Saturday evening, the Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office had not publicly responded to the family\u2019s questions about the circumstances surrounding Rashaud Martin\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

News4JAX has reached out to JSO for comment and will update this story when a response is received.<\/p>\n

Vanessa Martin says she will continue pushing for the release of body camera footage from the night of Oct. 24 and for a full accounting of what happened to her son.<\/p>\n

For Vanessa, that means fighting for Rashaud, and for every family that picks up the phone in a moment of crisis and deserves to have help actually arrive.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 A vigil was held at Riverview Park on Saturday evening as friends, family, and community…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1014020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4317],"tags":[105,14048,14050,218,16,15],"class_list":["post-1014019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-jacksonville","tag-jso","tag-mental-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116716764396795453","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1014019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1014020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1014019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1014019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1014019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}