JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Action News Jax is hearing from the family of Corey Denmark, the man they say was shot and killed in a shopping center in Jacksonville’s Paxon neighborhood on Wednesday night.
We first covered this shooting as breaking news less than two hours after the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said officers responded to the shopping center.
JSO said two men were found shot in the parking lot of the shopping center at the intersection of Edgewood Avenue and Broadway Avenue, at around 8:10 p.m. JSO told us one of the men was killed, and the other went to the hospital, where he is expected to recover.
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Denmark’s family said they’re not sure how or why he was at the shopping center, but they told us they’re feeling numb to the loss, still unsure of how to process it.
“We’re just in disbelief,” said Natasha Hughes, Denmark’s sister, “he’s not coming home. It’s over.”
Hughes said Denmark is the third sibling she’s lost in the last three years. She said her sister, Stacy, died from cancer last year, and her brother, Tony, died in 2022, also from gun violence in Jacksonville.
Hughes is still trying to process the loss of another brother.
“[Corey] was a caring guy, he’d give you the shirt off his back,” Hughes said, “he just brightened your day. When you’re having a bad day, and he would walk around, you couldn’t do nothing but laugh or dance.”
JSO is still investigating exactly what led up to the shooting. We reached out to JSO to ask if there were any updates in the case, including if there were any suspects identified or arrested, but we were told that, at this time, there are no further updates.
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Besides the shooting, Action News Jax learned that JSO has been called to the Paxon shopping center more than 100 times this year. At least five of those calls were for assaults and disputes involving weapons.
Action News Jax has tracked seven separate shootings at or near the shopping center since 2020. In a statement, JSO told us it “will continue to frequent the area and conduct further deployments at the shopping center if necessary to curtail any nuisance/criminal violations.”
Hughes is confident that whoever shot her brother will be held accountable for his death, but she hopes more can be done to prevent future gun violence in the area.
“This was a situation where it was our family today, it could be yours tomorrow,” Hughes said.
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