Marshals fatally shoot child sex fugitive at Florida motel

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – A man accused of sexual battery on a child was shot and killed during a confrontation with a fugitive task force at a motel in eastern Florida.

St. Johns County Sheriff’s spokesman Chuck Mulligan said 58-year-old James Benny Hobbs opened the door to his room at a Howard Johnson motel in St. Augustine on Tuesday evening and made “several sudden moves” that caused three officers to fatally shoot him.

Mulligan said the man was wanted on an aggravated sexual assault on a child under the age of 15 in New Hampshire. No officers were injured.

Two of the officers who fired were members of the U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force and one was sheriff’s Deputy M. Toubali. Mulligan said it was Toubali’s first officer-involved shooting. He did not identify the undercover marshals.