Countywide

A battle between two men with semi-automatic weapons left one dead in Campo Saturday night and a second jailed and accused of homicide, the Sheriff’s Department reported.

The incident included an emergency landing by a Life Flight helicopter when the pilot realized he was running out of fuel.

Sgt. Roy Stamper said deputies were called to Campo, near the Mexican border, shortly after 7:30 p.m. when a man walked into the Campo Volunteer Fire Department and reported a shooting at an apartment in the 700 block of Forest Gate. The witness said someone had been shot in the throat with an AK-47, and provided the name of the assailant.

Sheriff’s deputies who arrived at the scene found paramedics unsuccessfully trying to revive the victim, who was pronounced dead at 8:41 p.m. The dead man had an M-16 assault rifle, Stamper said.

Deputies arrested Ray Reagan, 38, of Campo, as he drove toward the Mexican border, Stamper said.

Meanwhile, a Life Flight helicopter with a relatively new pilot was dispatched to the scene but had to set down near Camp Barrett because of low fuel, another pilot at the UCSD base station for Life Flight said. He would not identify himself.

The Life Flight and sheriff’s spokesman both said that paramedics had performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the victim for more than an hour, so Life Flight’s arrival probably would not have saved him.