Man Dies After Police Use Pepper Spray

An Oxnard man who was muttering and staggering disoriented down his street died Monday night shortly after police pepper-sprayed him for lashing out at an officer who tried to talk to him.

The man was identified as Ray Lee Carter, 40, a self-employed handyman.

“I’ve been with this office going on 17 years and we’ve never had a pepper-spray death that I’ve been aware of,” said Jim Wingate, chief deputy coroner with the Ventura County medical examiner’s office.

Cmdr. Joe Munoz defended his department’s use of the spray, saying officers did not use an excessive amount as some members of Carter’s family later claimed.

“I don’t know the exact amount, I know it was not an excessive amount,” he said. “We did not empty cans of pepper spray onto Mr. Carter at all . . . In most situations, a short burst is sufficient.”

An autopsy conducted Tuesday showed the 280-pound Carter died of cardiopulmonary arrest--which means his heart stopped and he stopped breathing, but is not a heart attack, Wingate said.

Just why his heart stopped is unknown. The autopsy found no sign of heart disease, no visible injuries to Carter’s body and, although the results of toxicology tests won’t be known for about a month, no obvious sign of drug use.

“In other words, we found nothing,” Wingate said.

But family members question the amount of pepper spray that was used, while conceding Carter was acting irrationally.

“I do believe he was kind of hard to handle, but we don’t know what was going on,” said Sheila Boyd, 28, Carter’s niece. “Roy is a law-abiding citizen. He’s never been in any trouble.”

Carter did not use drugs, she said.

To police, the 6-foot, 2-inch Carter was simply a man talking to himself and acting bizarrely when they found him wandering on Elsinore Avenue.

To his family, “Roy” Carter, as he preferred to be known, was a dedicated father who doted on his 9-year-old daughter, closely followed his beloved San Francisco 49ers and was a regular at Ventura County Fairgrounds’ Derby Club.

“Earlier, he was all happy and stuff,” said Carter’s nephew, Shane Leblanc, 16, who had gone to a local record store with his uncle that day. “It’s kinda hard to believe after you’ve just seen the guy and he was all right.”

Carter had taken two younger nieces out for pizza and then returned to a room he was renting from cousin Karrie Thomas, 62. A little later, Carter emerged from his room disoriented and muttering incoherently, Thomas said.

He began wandering down the sidewalk toward Carob Street and fell over a fire hydrant. Thomas said she hurried after him, but left to run to a neighbor’s house and call 911. By that time, a big crowd of police had arrived, she said.

“When I got back, they had sprayed him with two cans of pepper spray,” she said. “They could have subdued him if they wanted to.”

Munoz says about six Oxnard and Port Hueneme police officers were on the scene along with firefighters and paramedics, for a total of about a dozen people.

Pepper spray has been linked to deaths in other places. At least 61 people who received a burst of pepper spray died between 1990 and June 1995, 27 of them in California, a Times review of in-custody deaths found last year.

Most spray-related deaths are also linked to other factors, including drugs, alcohol, heart conditions and the restraining technique used. Large-framed men weighing more than 250 pounds are believed to be at particular risk, experts told The Times.

But handcuffs, not a choke hold, were used to prevent Carter from attempting to strike police, Munoz said.

A Port Hueneme police officer used the irritating spray when Carter took a few swings at Sgt. Lee Wilcox, an Oxnard Police Department veteran who was first on the scene, Munoz said.

Oxnard has no plans to review its use of the chemical until all autopsy and toxicology results are in, Munoz said.

“Certainly we would look at that and see where it fits in the department as a tool for resisting combative individuals,” he said. “[But] we don’t want to be premature [in deciding] what caused the death of the individual.”