Police Call Fatal Shooting Justified

Ventura police said Wednesday that one of their officers was justified in using deadly force when he shot and killed a plastics worker who pointed a loaded, .357-caliber magnum handgun at him.

Cpl. Kenneth Corney yelled “Ventura police! Drop it!” at Owen (Butch) Spring outside a College Drive boardinghouse Tuesday night as Spring pulled the handgun from a hip holster, said Lt. Don Arth, a police spokesman.

When Spring did not drop the weapon and kept moving forward, Corney, 31, a 4 1/2-year department veteran, fired a single shotgun round at him, Arth said.

Spring, 22, of east Ventura, was killed instantly by a single shotgun pellet that struck his face and lodged in the rear part of his brain, said Dr. F. Warren Lovell, the Ventura County coroner. Tests are being done to determine whether Spring was intoxicated at the time and whether he had fired the gun, police said.

Corney and his partner, Officer Ron Zavala, 38, have been placed on paid leave until police investigators finish reviewing Spring’s death, Arth said. At the time of the shooting, Corney was training Zavala, who had about two months’ experience with the department, Arth said.

Chris Smith, a tenant of the boardinghouse and a close friend of Spring, said he had accompanied him there after the two spent the afternoon drinking beer in the Ventura River bottom.

Smith confirmed that Spring drew a chrome .357 magnum from a holster on his right hip, but he said that Spring never pointed the gun at police and that police did not warn Spring before shooting him.

Witnesses said the stage was set Monday night for the shooting when someone vandalized a blue Chevrolet Citation parked across the street from the 324 S. College Drive boardinghouse owned by Beverly Sardella.

The tires were slashed, the windows shot out with a pellet gun and the radio stolen from the car, which belonged to an unidentified friend of boardinghouse tenant John Bongiovanni, witnesses said.

Smith, who said he owns a pellet gun but did not damage the car, said he heard Tuesday afternoon, while he and Spring were drinking beer in the Ventura River bottom, that he had been blamed for the vandalism.

“One of my roommates told me there’s a bunch of hotheads waiting for me” back at the house, Smith said.

Smith and Spring had drunk about five beers apiece, but Spring, who “probably shouldn’t have been driving,” drove them to the house, Smith said.

Spring strapped on his gun because “he thought I was going to be in danger, and the weapon was just in case something happened,” Smith said Wednesday. “He wasn’t a violent person or a hateful person or in gangs or anything. One of his buddies was in trouble.”

Smith said that when the pair reached the boardinghouse Tuesday, he walked into Bongiovanni’s room “to get some answers” and yelled at Bongiovanni and two other men there.

However, according to Casey Ryan of Ventura, Smith “came into the back room through the door and started hitting us.”

The argument spilled out onto the front lawn, where Smith said he and another man began wrestling in a bed of ivy after Bongiovanni ran down the street.

Ryan and Sardella confirmed this account.

About 7:30 p.m., someone called the 911 emergency number from inside the house to report shots being fired, and Corney arrived at 7:32 p.m., according to entries in the Ventura police dispatcher’s logs.

But another log entry at 7:32 p.m. shows that someone identified as “Roland Spring” reported to police that no shots had been fired.

Ryan said that when police officers arrived, they told him to leave. As he walked around the corner, he said, officers swarmed behind walls bordering the house. Seconds later, he heard a gunshot, he said.

Smith said he was yelling at the other man in the ivy when two officers surrounded him with guns drawn and ordered him onto his knees with hands behind his head.

As he knelt, Smith said he saw Spring walk out of the house.

“He’d been drinking, and I don’t know what he was thinking when he pulled his gun out of his holster and pointed it,” Smith said, demonstrating, his arm moving slowly from his hip to stop at about a 45-degree angle to the ground.

“There was no warning given at all. There was one shot. There was no other shots fired,” Smith said.

And several neighbors and witnesses said they heard no gunfire before the shot that killed Spring, which was logged at 7:35 p.m. by Ventura dispatchers.

“All I saw was him raise the gun and point it out toward the street” before police shot him, said Sardella, who watched from inside her front window. “I can’t believe it happened on my own front steps.”

Arth said Spring’s gun was fully loaded with hollow-point rounds, designed to inflict major injury upon impact, and that he carried two police-type speed-loaders in his belt pouch. Arth said Corney shot Spring in self-defense, which is within department guidelines.

Spring worked for Wheaton Plastic Containers in Ventura, said Smith’s girlfriend, Dorothy Braga. “He was a nice person and mellow,” she said. “He’d never pull a gun on anyone unless they pulled a gun on him.”

Spring’s death is the third fatal shooting in five years involving Ventura police, Chief Richard Thomas said.

Arth said he is not aware of any other case in which Corney has shot a suspect.

Times correspondent Karen McKean contributed to this story.