Incident: August 11, 2026, the 1100 block of Westdale Drive, Jacksonville, Florida. Footage released by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office on August 26, 2026.
A man called the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and reported that his girlfriend had battered him. He had minor injuries and met officers outside. He told them she was still inside the house, armed with a knife. Five other people were in the residence with her.
Dispatch went out at 10:45. An officer was on scene at 10:48.
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While that officer was still speaking with the domestic battery victim in the driveway, Asia Marie Bennett, 22, came out the front door holding several items, including a large butcher-style kitchen knife.
The officer unholstered and gave repeated commands to drop everything in her hands. Bennett put the other items down. She kept the knife and a cell phone. Then she advanced on the officer while yelling at her to go ahead and kill her.
At approximately ten feet, the officer fired and struck her. Bennett went to the ground with the knife still in her hand. She attempted to get back up, still armed and still refusing commands, and the officer fired a second time.
Officers moved in and took her into custody once the knife was out of her hand. Paramedics staged nearby began rendering aid immediately. Bennett was transported to a local hospital and pronounced deceased. No officers were injured.
Now the footage.
This is about as clean as a knife shooting gets, and it is exactly the kind of shooting people will argue about anyway.
Ten feet with an edged weapon is not a standoff. It is a contact distance. Somebody who decides to close that gap reaches you before your rounds do anything, and every one of us learned that on the range and then watched it prove out on the street. There is no version of this where an officer backs her way out of a butcher knife being carried toward her by a person telling her to kill her.
The second round draws the most complaints and it is the easiest one on the tape to justify. From the shooter’s own camera, behind that car, you cannot see what is happening on the ground. From the second officer’s camera you can — Bennett is down and she is coming back up, knife still in her hand. At that range, if she gets up and moves, somebody gets stabbed. That is not a close call and it should not be treated like one.
Here is the part nobody will praise, and it is the best thing in the video. Listen to that officer immediately after she has fired two rounds and killed somebody. She is calm. She is coordinating. She assigns lethal and less-lethal, she sorts out who is going hands, and she keeps talking to Bennett the whole time — drop the knife and we will come give you medical aid. That is somebody who has just been in a shooting running her own scene like a supervisor. For a person minutes into the worst day of her career, that is outstanding work.
On the aid question, since it comes up every single time this kind of video goes out: nobody is required to walk into a knife to render medical aid to the person holding it. That officer asked, repeatedly, for the knife to come out of the hand so rescue could get in. Bennett kept it. That was Bennett setting the timeline, not the officers.
Bennett being a domestic violence victim herself does not change the analysis. It is a tragedy either way, and it is still not something an officer gets paid to be stabbed over.
One note on the department’s release. The front end of that briefing is spent teaching use-of-force law and explaining how body cameras work, and then it puts the officer’s name in the video. Give the facts and play the footage. The name does not need to be in there.
Bennett is dead, so there is no case — though the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office stated she would have been charged with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer and domestic battery. The shooting has not been ruled on. The State Attorney’s Office reviews the officer’s actions independently.
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