‘Got my gun on you.’ Deputy points weapon at pregnant Black woman, Florida video shows

A deputy has resigned after he pulled a gun on a pregnant Black woman and threatened her during a traffic stop, a Florida sheriff said.

The deputy, Jacob DeSue, tried to stop the woman, who was accused of driving 75 mph in a 55-mph zone just before midnight on Aug. 12, a report from Bradford Sheriff Gordon Smith says.

When DeSue turned on his patrol vehicle’s emergency lights, the driver of the car slowed down but did not stop, and continued to drive along the road.

“Pull over or I will put you in the ground,” DeSue said through the car’s speaker system, according to the report.

After about three minutes, the driver reached a convenience store and parked in the parking lot.

DeSue got out of his vehicle, drew his gun and ordered her to turn off her car and show him her hands.

“If you make any movement that will be the last mistake you ever make,” he said, according to the report.

He then told her to get out of the car. When she told him her door was locked, he said “Unlock it, I’m not worried I’ve got my gun on you,” the report says.

When she got out of the vehicle, she told DeSue that she was pregnant, had children in the car, and had not wanted to stop “in the middle of nowhere.”

“Your excuses mean nothing to me,” he told her, according to the report. He handcuffed her and brought her to the back of his vehicle to wait for a sergeant to arrive.

When she tried to explain again why she hadn’t stopped immediately, he told her to “shut up” and said he “didn’t care about why.”

The driver told News4Jax that she was on her way home to Jacksonville from Gainesville when she was pulled over.

Jacksonville is about 140 miles north of Orlando.

She said she didn’t pull over initially because she didn’t want to be in a dark place with no people around while her kids were in the car, she told the news outlet.

“It was dark and I was with my kids,” she told the outlet “I felt uncomfortable…”

“I am disturbed and disheartened how Jacob DeSue handled the traffic stop,” Smith said in a statement sent to McClatchy News. “She responded in a manner that was totally understandable in this circumstance. Jacob DeSue should have deescalated the situation(,) but disappointingly was unable to respond in the appropriate manner.”

Smith said in the statement that DeSue, who started with the department on March 27, 2020, had resigned and that the sheriff’s office was investigating the incident internally. DeSue’s resignation letter is dated Aug. 16.

“I want to reassure our community that I will hold the men and women of the Sheriff’s Office accountable to the highest standards of our profession,” the statement says.

This story was originally published August 23, 2022 at 2:39 PM with the headline "‘Got my gun on you.’ Deputy points weapon at pregnant Black woman, Florida video shows."