Soutel Drive in Jacksonville saw a lot of folks out early Monday. Around 4:30 a.m., officers got the call to the parking lot near a club on the street. What they found changed everything.
A man in his late 30s lay there with a gunshot wound. Jacksonville Fire and Rescue crews worked fast, but he was gone by the time they could even start. The body belonged to Frederick Hughes. His family identified him right away. He was a father, a stepfather, and close to becoming a grandfather.
Maria Hughes raised the boy after his mom got killed back in 1999. The same age she was when it happened. Last night she had a bad feeling about him heading out. He always called her when he made it home safe. This morning the call came, but it wasn’t from him. Witnesses told her he was just parked there, nothing to do with whatever started down the street. “He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” they kept saying.
Maria stood there broken. “He was a good boy,” she said. “These young folks got to learn to put these guns down. It’s just too senseless. Life is precious.” She blamed the loose gun laws and walked the same streets seeing kids carrying heat like it was nothing.
Bishop Sheldon L. Creighton, Victory Temple Church pastor and family, joined her. They walked the busy Northside corner where this all went down. The spot had seen trouble before. The family pointed straight at MVP Sports Bar & Grill. They wanted it shut down. City leaders needed to clean up the corner. If it was your kid, you’d demand answers.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said the case stays open. No shooter named yet. Anyone with info can hit them at 904-630-0500 or Crime Stoppers at 866-845-TIPS. The homicide unit keeps digging.
Hughes never got to meet his first grandchild. That one fact sits heavy with everyone who knew him. The family keeps pushing for real change at that corner and in the rules that let this kind of thing keep happening. Life isn’t supposed to end over nothing like that.
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