An “evil” gas station worker pumped 24 bullets into an off-duty Florida police officer — then blamed it “having a bad day,” authorities said as they charged him with murder.
Edgewater Police Officer David Jewell, a 45-year-old dad, was shot in the head multiple times at point-blank range in a Circle K gas station in Ormond-by-the-Sea on Monday afternoon, Volusia County sheriff’s officials said.
Chilling surveillance footage shows the suspect — identified by cops as gas station employee Eduardo Labrada Machado — leaving the store after Jewell walked in and retrieving a jacket from his car.
Machado, a 24-year-old green card holder, is then seen returning to the store, pulling out his handgun — and shooting him multiple times in the head, killing him, the sheriff’s office said.
“Firing 24 shots, two clips, into off-duty police officer David Jewell, assassinating him on the spot,” Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood told a news conference as he played some of the sickening video.
“In 38 years of policing, as a homicide detective, at the time the fourth-largest city in the country, to watch the evil and the calculating-ness of what he did to Officer Jewell, you cannot describe it.”
Machado reportedly confessed to murdering Jewell, telling cops he had seen the officer in the store several times and believed the pair had argued in the past, authorities said.
“The defendant said he was having a bad day on his drive to work, and thought about shooting Jewell earlier,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement on social media.
“When he arrived at work and saw Jewell, he used a handgun he recently purchased to shoot him multiple times at close range. He did not say anything to Jewell prior to shooting him.”
The handgun believed to have been used was later found in Machado’s car, and the gas station clerk was booked into jail on a first-degree murder charge.
Machado had no criminal history, but had an encounter with law enforcement in 2023 after firing weapons in a state park, the sheriff’s office said.
Family members said he had been diagnosed with a mental health disorder, according to the sheriff’s office.
He is a legal resident of the US who has lived in the country for the past 10 years.
Jewell had been an officer for the Edgewater Police Department for the past two years, previously working for the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office and Lake Helen Police Department.
A GoFundMe set up by his fellow officers to raise money for his family had already raised more than $33,000 as of Wednesday morning.
“To honor his service and support his family during this devastating time, we are raising funds to provide ongoing care for his wife, father-in-law and son as David was their sole provider,” the fundraiser reads.
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