Nassau County Sheriff’s Office detained a current Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office deputy on Wednesday night, Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said on Thursday.
According to Waters, Brian Housend was detained on the following grounds:
- Armed kidnapping with a firearm
- Written threats to kill
- Aggravated stalking
According to Waters, Housend has been put on leave and suspended, and JSO will take the necessary steps to fire him. The charges against Housend were deemed “serious and deplorable” by the sheriff.
According to Waters, Housend was hired by JSO for the first time on October 31, 2005, left the company to work for another company, and was then hired again twice.
On Wednesday, JSO was informed of the inquiry and provided support to NCSO.
Waters stated he was unable to provide specifics of the case since NCSO is both the investigating and the arresting agency.
The warrant stated that the victim “observed what she believed to be a green laser shining into the window of her home” on Tuesday, prompting a Nassau deputy to respond to the residence. According to the warrant, the victim stated that she “thought it was the kind of laser that could be attached to a firearm.”
She informed the deputy that, “based on an ongoing pattern of threats she had been receiving from” Housend, she thought it might be Housend pointing the laser at her house. She also informed deputies, according to the warrant, that Housend “has a large collection of firearms that he owns” for both personal and business usage.
The warrant states that the suspect “makes statements to (victim) several times between 5-10-2024 and 8-13-2024 threatening bodily harm if she refuses to allow him back into her life.” The messages, which are part of the warrant, were shown to investigators by the victim. Redacted are Housend’s texts to the victim.
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Investigators examined the communications and found that one of them mentioned “that night in February when you hurt me.” Housend “had physically abused her when trying to pry her cellphone from her hands,” the victim reported to the deputy. After the altercation, Suspect—without warning or justification—took a Colt rifle from the gun safe, according to the warrant.
“She told the treating physicians that the injuries were the result of falling down, but stated that she lied about that out of fear for the way Suspect would respond if she were to have told the truth,” the woman claimed to have said when she visited the doctor in February. Her injuries, “which included swelling and bruising around her right eye, as well as swelling and redness to her upper lip,” were displayed to the deputy through pictures she had provided.
Housend threatened to kill the victim unless she gave him another chance, according to one of the messages that the victim wrote to the suspect on July 11. The message read, “You are holding me hostage in the house today and terrorizing me.”
According to the warrant, the victim provided the deputy with further information regarding the event, stating that the “Suspect entered her home without permission in his marked JSO patrol car, wearing his JSO service weapon and JSO uniform.”
According to the warrant, Housend knocked on the victim’s rear door and she “reluctantly” allowed him inside. After a cordial exchange, they “eventually shifted to a threatening conversation,” during which Housend threatened to kill the victim “there and then” if she “would not get back with him.”
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Housend persuaded the victim to go outside “so he could ‘take care of it,'” but she refused and continued to sit in a computer chair facing away from him. According to the warrant, the victim “thought that Suspect would be less likely to kill her if he had to shoot her in the back.”
Housend “was snapping and unsnapping the holster carrying his service pistol in an overtly threatening manner,” the victim informed the deputy, according to the warrant.
She informed the deputy that, according to the warrant, “she felt she was confined in her home and that she was in fear for her life” at this time.
Housend is being held on a $1.25 million bond, per the NCSO’s online inmate query.
