By Angie DiMichele
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. — A man was shot and killed by multiple Boynton Beach Police officers at a public park on Saturday morning after he pulled a machete on his father and advanced toward officers with it, according to the police department and dashboard camera video.
Edenson Jules, 31, of Boynton Beach, was in a domestic dispute with his father shortly before 11 a.m. Saturday near the 600 block of Northeast 20th Lane, police and fire rescue spokesperson Chelsea Sanabia said in a news release.
Jules had pulled the machete out during the dispute with his father, according to dispatch audio and video released by the police department on Monday.
When officers arrived at nearby Intracoastal Park, they found Jules still armed with the machete, Sanabia said. Multiple people at the park were nearby.
Dashboard camera video showed Jules shouting and running toward one officer’s car with the machete in his right hand as the officer arrived and parked.
Before the officer got out of his car, Jules was yelling to “shoot him” while pacing next to and in front of the car. A parkgoer rode a bicycle by Jules and several people could be seen in the video walking in the area just behind the parking lot.
“Step back, sir,” the officer first repeatedly said to Jules.
He and at least one other male officer both shouted for Jules to get on the ground and drop the machete. One officer could be heard telling Jules to “relax” as he screamed to be shot.
“Tell me what’s going on,” the officer said. Jules appeared to reply, “I want to die!”
The officer, with his gun pointed at Jules, continued to urge him to talk to them about what happened. The second officer who could be seen told Jules, who started to walk away from them, to come back and talk, the video showed. Both officers kept their guns pointed at Jules as he started to walk backward and away from them.
A total of five officers were pointing guns at him during the about two-minute encounter in the parking lot. It escalated when Jules started advancing toward two of the officers, slashed the machete twice against the concrete and raised it up in the air while walking toward them.
Multiple officers shot Jules numerous times, the video showed. After he fell onto the ground, one officer used his foot to kick away the machete from Jules.
Sanabia said that Jules told officers, “Shoot, why you don’t want to shoot?” before he charged at them.
Boynton Beach Fire took him to Delray Medical Center , where he died.
None of the officers were injured. Four of them are on administrative leave, which is standard policy. Sanabia identified them as Sunil Surajbally, Brittany Jones, Amanda Eichorst and Thomas Winkles.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement will investigate.
It is at least the sixth officer shooting in South Florida since the start of the year.
In February, a man was hospitalized after a shootout with a Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy and a Lauderhill Police officer at the Calypso Cay apartments in Lauderhill . Earlier that month, a 39-year-old man was hospitalized after he was shot by deputies in Oakland Park while armed with a knife.
Three other shootings happened in January, all involving Fort Lauderdale Police . An off-duty officer shot a man at a marina and RV park on Jan. 29 after police were called about him making a disturbance. He was taken to the hospital and later died.
A little more than a week earlier, an officer shot and killed a man who got out of his car at a gas station, armed with what appeared to be a gun after fleeing an earlier traffic stop.
On Jan. 9, officers shot and killed a man while responding to a call about a man setting a building on fire, according to Fort Lauderdale Police .
When they arrived, they saw the building actively on fire and the man throwing “incendiary devices” at them. Officers later found that the same man had set fire to a different building one block away and left a note that he would set fire to the address where officers encountered him that morning, the police department said in an updated news release in late March.
He was recently identified as an unhoused person living in Fort Lauderdale.
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