A Suspect Again Slain by Police : Shootings: Assault suspect becomes the ninth person killed by San Diego Police officers this year.

A 21-year-old Ocean Beach man was shot and killed Thursday by one of the two San Diego Police officers who were attempting to arrest him on an assault charge.

Police said the suspect attacked the officers with a pair of martial arts nunchakus he had taken from one of them. The suspect was the ninth person to be slain by San Diego police so far this year.

Witnesses to the shooting disputed the officers’ account and questioned whether it was necessary for police to use deadly force in the incident, the second time this week that San Diego police have killed a suspect.

Police gave this description of Thursday’s events:

Officers John Cain and Detective Ron Featherly, both of whom have shot and killed suspects before, prepared to arrest Anthony Tumminia outside his West Point Loma Drive apartment on an assault charge at about 9 a.m. when he became violent.

They walked Tumminia from his apartment to his red Toyota pickup truck to find a steering wheel locking device, which allegedly had been used in the assault.

Police could not say whether they found such a device or whether they had a search warrant. Nor did they have any details about the alleged assault.

But, when Cain and Featherly began to arrest Tumminia, he resisted, grabbed Cain’s nunchakus and struck both men.

Cain fired a single shot into Tumminia’s chest. He was pronounced dead at UC San Diego Medical Center at 9:55 a.m.

In interviews with The Times, two witnesses disputed the police account and said they saw no nunchakus used by the victim.

Michele Hatfield, 21, who lives across the street from the restaurant parking lot where the shooting occurred, said the officers stood on either side of Tumminia and held him face down, with his hands behind his back. She said Featherly, dressed in a suit, was kicking Tumminia in the ribs at the time.

They flipped Tumminia on his back, Hatfield said, and he began to rise. Tumminia stood up, and either pushed or hit Featherly, she said. He backed up two steps, apparently about to run, when Cain fired.

She said Tumminia had no weapon at the time he was shot.

“It happened like it was in slow motion,” she said. “The last thing I could think of was that Tony was going to get shot. You’re not supposed to resist arrest, but they could have done something else.”

Debbie Tehan of Hillcrest was driving to a martial-arts class about 9:20 a.m. when she passed the restaurant parking lot. She said the officers had Tumminia pinned, and he was screaming at the same time the burglar alarm in his truck was wailing. She said she did not see a weapon in his hand from about 25 yards away.

“I don’t think (the shooting) was justified,” she said. “I feel there are other ways of handling someone’s anger.”

After the shooting, a pair of black polycarbonate nunchakus, which all officers are required to carry, were lying on the ground next to Tumminia.

Cain, 29, has been a patrol officer 1 1/2 years. He shot and killed an alleged purse snatcher in February after the man started to point an unloaded .22-caliber pistol at him. The district attorney cleared Cain in that shooting.

Featherly, 30, a seven-year veteran, fatally shot 25-year-old Chip Doonan of Clairemont in January, 1988, an action Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller severely criticized while also clearing him of legal wrongdoing.

Doonan had been carrying a pellet gun under his arm. When Featherly told him, “Put your hands up,” it was his first warning to a startled Doonan, who reached for the gun, uttering “It’s . . . “ before Featherly shot him, according to the D.A.’s report. Doonan finished his sentence as he started to fall: “ . . . only a BB gun.”

The report said Featherly was “visibly shaken” during the district attorney’s interview. In his report, Miller concluded that Doonan’s death was “a needless tragedy. The officers did nothing to alert Doonan to a police presence. They didn’t call out to him or question those in the residence as to who he was.”

Miller rejected the Doonan family’s assertion that police had been harassing Doonan for years.

In 1985, Featherly also shot and wounded a robbery suspect who had shot at him during a car chase.

Neither Cain nor Featherly was seriously hurt in the scuffle with Tumminia.

Tumminia, whom friends described as a health-conscious body-builder, lost his job as a Domino’s pizza deliverer on Voltaire Street two weeks ago after getting into a fistfight with a customer, said Chris Peters, who was an assistant manager at the store.

Neighbors remembered Tumminia as friendly, good with kids, and seemingly unable to work himself into the violent frenzy of which he is accused.

“I can’t picture Tony as the type to resist arrest,” said Michelle Warren, a neighbor who heard the gunfire and saw police standing over Tumminia with guns drawn. “He was just a young kid starting out.

“Even if he took the nunchakus from a cop’s belt, I can’t see getting shot in the chest.”

Thursday’s events once again raised questions about the number of times San Diego police officers have been involved in shootings--21 times so far this year, nine of them fatal. Last year, there were 24 police shootings, the highest ever for San Diego police in the last six years. In 1988, there were 10 fatal shootings by police.

“There is not a wave of police shootings, just a series of incidents that have to be looked at individually,” Deputy Chief Ken Fortier said Thursday. “I know the public is concerned. So are we. But officers are lawfully permitted to shoot if their lives are in danger.”

Mayor Maureen O’Connor told a gathering of reporters Thursday that she had no answers.

“I’m as alarmed as everyone else,” she said after a speech. “We have to come up with some solution. It’s clear this has become a recurring event.”

Police Chief Bob Burgreen last month ordered a task force to analyze the department’s use of deadly force, from a review of training and textbooks to the scrutiny of similar-sized agencies throughout the country.

He requested the review in response to three specific controversial shootings, two of which involved lethal force on men wielding baseball bats and the other a cement trowel. The district attorney’s office has ruled on the trowel case and one of the baseball bat shootings, saying the officers in both cases acted in self-defense.

On Tuesday, police shot and killed a man armed with a 3-foot long wooden garden stake.

The shootings have not been limited to the San Diego Police Department. Last Saturday, a U.S. Border Patrol Agent fatally shot an undocumented alien who the agent said had hit him with a rock. Some witnesses said the man had thrown no rocks.

Times staff writers Armando Acuna and Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed to this report.