“Gary killed her.”
Those were the words Joe Jackson’s 17-year-old daughter Lisa said in a phone call from the hospital the morning of Aug. 29, 1989. Jackson’s first love and ex-wife had been stabbed and shot in the throat by her new husband Gary.
“There was blood everywhere, all up and down the walls, like she was crawling to get out of there,” he said.
Jackson is a longtime board member of Peaceful Paths, a domestic violence network that works with Alachua, Bradford and Union counties to aid survivors.
He shared his story at a news conference Tuesday, when the network officially announced the launch of the High Risk Team in Alachua County.
The team will take on local cases of domestic violence and will meet monthly with local experts and community advocates to assess how dangerous the relationships are. The goal is to provide a stronger system for supporting victims of intimate partner violence.
“One of the very productive outcomes of this team effort has been the research,” said Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell. “Each year going back to 2003, there’s a minimum of 1,500 and as much as 1,900 related offenses in addition to the ultimate offense, which is murder.”
The group will work out a plan to get victims to talk, said Capt. Lynne Benck, commander of the GPD Investigations Bureau.
“Statistics show that a lot of people who are actually victims of intimate partner violence never actually contact the law enforcement,” she said. “That’s a problem area. But there’s no doubt in my mind we will identify a plan of action to save lives.”
The team’s greatest hope is to be a system of power against the threat of domestic violence, said Theresa Beachy, Peaceful Path’s executive director.
“We’re the first in Florida to do this at the high-risk team level,” Darnell said.
Jackson said he’s proud of the continuing efforts made by the organization.
“This is one of the best groups of people you can find, here at Peaceful Paths. The impact is tremendous,” Jackson said.
A version of this story ran on page 4 on 10/23/2013 under the headline "Alachua County domestic violence task force launches"
