Officer Shoots, Kills His Alleged Attacker

A police officer attempting to break up a domestic dispute shot and killed a man who allegedly hit him with a metal fan, Orange police said Tuesday.

Ramon Ibarra Ibarra, 27, died at 10:09 p.m. Monday at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana. He had been shot twice--once in the left side of the chest and once in the buttocks, hospital spokeswoman Ellen Ball said.

The officer, whose name was withheld pending an investigation by the Orange County district attorney’s office, was treated for a head wound by his private doctor and released, Sgt. Bob Gustafson said.

Ibarra’s common-law wife, Connie Owen, said she called the police to their apartment on South Lemon Street after Ibarra came home from work in a rage and threatened to kill her and harm their five young children.

“I feel sorry for the policemen,” Owen said as she sat on the front stoop of the apartment complex, still in a daze from the night of violence. “But they didn’t have to shoot him. All I wanted was for them to take him away.”

Orange police and the district attorney’s office, which routinely investigates officer-involved shootings, released only sketchy details of Monday’s incident.

Gustafson said Ibarra ignored orders to surrender, picked up the fan and swung it at the officer, hitting him in the head. The officer then opened fire. Owen described the fan as a three-foot-square metal fan.

Gustafson declined to say how many shots were fired or how many officers were present at the time of the shooting.

With tears welling up in her eyes, Owen recounted the events that led up to Ibarra’s death.

She said that Ibarra came home about 9 p.m. and that the couple immediately got in a fight. He struck her and their 5-year-old daughter and appeared to be under the influence of drugs, she said. Police declined to comment on whether there was evidence of drugs or alcohol abuse.

“He was just out of it on drugs,” Owen said as she held her 3-month-old baby, Debbie. “He kept saying he was going to kill me. . . .”

“I’ve seen him mad before,” she said of Ibarra, an immigrant from Mexico who had recently lost his job. “This time I thought he was going to kill me and the kids.”

Owen said she and the children fled the apartment, seeking refuge in a neighboring unit.

A short time later, Ibarra wandered out to a common area of the narrow complex and began screaming her name and shouting obscenities. He then walked back inside, she said.

At that point, Owen said, she called police as she had a week earlier when he threatened her.

Officers arrived at the apartment minutes later and went into the darkened home, Owen said.

Owen said she stood outside and heard Ibarra taunting the officers. “They (police) said, ‘Stop where you are.’ But he kept screaming for them to come and get him.”

“The next thing I knew, I heard two shots. I knew it was Raymond who was hit. He doesn’t have a gun.”

After the shooting, Owen said, she saw an officer “pacing back and forth in front of the building, all nervous. He was waving his arms and he looked really torn up, I could tell.”

The incident was the second officer-involved shooting in Orange County in a week, and the 10th this year. Three of the shootings, including Monday’s, were fatal.

On Friday, a sheriff’s deputy critically wounded an armed man suspected of beating a taxicab driver with a .45-caliber automatic pistol, stealing his car and leading police on a freeway chase.

Last week, the district attorney’s office ruled that Orange County officers were justified in the shooting deaths of two men in March and April. Two off-duty Los Angeles police officers who were working as security guards were exonerated in a third.

One of the cases involved Orange police officers who killed Jose de Jesus Ramon Gonzalez, 27, in front of a Tustin convenience store. He was later found to be unarmed.

District attorney investigators determined that police acted correctly because in all three cases the victims appeared to be pulling a weapon.