JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – 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.
Vanessa Martin says she never wanted her son arrested. She wanted police to help him.
On the night of Oct. 24, 2025, Vanessa called the Jacksonville Sheriff’s 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.
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.
“I really would love closure in this situation,” Vanessa said Saturday. “I 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’t distributed until March, and now he died in October.”
Vanessa says the months-long wait for basic documentation only deepened her grief and her questions.
“So it’s just questions and answers and, you know, just respectfully — just please, please just give me the information needed so I can heal from this,” she said. “And I can just learn how to cope with losing my son.”
Saturday’s vigil was organized by Rashaud’s family in partnership with the Jacksonville Community Action Committee, a local advocacy organization that has taken up the family’s call for transparency and systemic change.
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.
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 — rather than sending law enforcement as the first and only response.
As of Saturday evening, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office had not publicly responded to the family’s questions about the circumstances surrounding Rashaud Martin’s death.
News4JAX has reached out to JSO for comment and will update this story when a response is received.
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.
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.
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