diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index b906f15e07..c495cd643e 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 3.0.21
+ * Fix Debian init start/stop (CASSANDRA-15770)
  * Fix infinite loop on index query paging in tables with clustering (CASSANDRA-14242)
  * Fix chunk index overflow due to large sstable with small chunk length (CASSANDRA-15595)
  * cqlsh return non-zero status when STDIN CQL fails (CASSANDRA-15623)
diff --git a/debian/init b/debian/init
index 26ce55ca2d..0518cd2541 100644
--- a/debian/init
+++ b/debian/init
@@ -98,7 +98,7 @@ do_stop()
     #   1 if daemon was already stopped
     #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
     #   other if a failure occurred
-    start-stop-daemon -K -p "$PIDFILE" -R TERM/30/KILL/5 >/dev/null
+    start-stop-daemon -K -u cassandra -p "$PIDFILE" -R TERM/30/KILL/5 >/dev/null
     RET=$?
     rm -f "$PIDFILE"
     return $RET