VENTURA COUNTY : Man’s Family Questions Police Shooting

The parents of a mentally ill man who was shot by police questioned Tuesday whether overzealous officers prematurely rushed him before a mental health crisis team could arrive.

Simi Valley police officers said they shot Mark Pedersen twice and accidentally wounded one of their own officers Monday afternoon when the psychotic man charged them with a pocketknife.

Chief Randy Adams said Tuesday that Officer John Hughes appeared to be justified in shooting Pedersen because the man was trying to stab Officer Dave Raduziner. One of the bullets passed through Pedersen’s chest and shattered Raduziner’s right thigh bone, Adams said.

Pedersen was hospitalized Tuesday with bullet wounds to his chest and lung, and faces a charge of attempted murder. The Simi Valley Hospital listed him in fair condition.

Raduziner, 31, a five-year veteran, was being treated at the same facility for a wound that could keep him hospitalized past Christmas, Adams said. He was listed in good condition.

Hughes, 31, a former LAPD officer who joined the Simi Valley force 14 months ago, has been placed on paid administrative leave after shooting Pedersen--standard practice for officer-involved shootings.

Pedersen’s mother, Bea Pedersen, said officers she had invited into the house ignored her pleas to wait before entering her son’s bedroom. She said she was on the phone with psychiatrists when police kicked down her son’s bedroom door because--they said later--they heard him moaning and thought he was hurting himself.

“This one officer seemed so antsy,” Bea Pedersen said. “I just felt they should have waited a few more minutes. I think it would have been a different story.”

Monday’s shooting was the second time in four months that a Simi Valley police officer was shot while trying to calm a mentally ill man.

On Aug. 4, Officer Michael Clark, formerly of the Los Angeles Police Department, was killed in a shootout with a disturbed Chatsworth teacher whom he had been sent to check on.

Critics have attacked police actions in both cases: The Pedersen shooting “looks essentially like a fingerprint” of the Clark shooting because police pushed both mentally ill suspects to violence, said Ventura County Deputy Public Defender Richard Holly.

“There’s something terribly wrong with the police response,” said Holly, who is representing Daniel Allan Tuffree, the man accused of killing Clark. “It’s being handled as if it’s a criminal investigation. . . . When you have that kind of approach, all you do is escalate the crisis to new levels.”