VENTURA : ‘Sand-Bag’ Rounds Used to Subdue Man

Police officers fired nine non-lethal “sand-bag” rounds at a Ventura man Saturday after the suspect reportedly threatened to kill family members and assaulted officers, authorities said.

Jeffrey Paul Carlson, 33, was booked into County Jail on suspicion of battery against a peace officer, resisting arrest and injuring officers, a jail spokeswoman said.

The police were called to Carlson’s parents’ home on the 400 block of Dayloma Avenue in Ventura after Carlson went into an unexplained violent episode--threatening to kill his father with a hammer, police said. When officers arrived Carlson burst through the front door, tearing it off its hinges, police said.

In their attempt to arrest Carlson, officers struck him several times with batons, doused him with pepper spray, and tried to wrestle him to the ground--all to no avail. They finally fired a shotgun loaded with 2-inch-by-2-inch sandbag rounds, striking him four times in the chest, but Carlson would not fall. He ran from the scene, and was chased onto the Ventura College campus about two blocks away. There he was cornered by 15 Ventura police officers, two college police officer and a Ventura County sheriff’s deputy with a police dog.

“He was one very big, very angry man,” a police spokeswoman said.

Carlson was shot five more times with the sandbag rounds, and while the dog attacked him he was swarmed by six officers, the spokeswoman said. Three officers were slightly injured in the struggle.

Carlson sustained a minor puncture wound to the elbow from the sandbag blasts and several dog bites to the legs and groin. He was treated at Ventura County Medical Center before being booked. Bail was set at $20,000.