Man With Knife Killed by Police
Oxnard police shot and killed a knife-wielding man Friday after he allegedly threatened his mother and officers.
Robert Lee Jones, 23, died at a hospital shortly after the 11 a.m. incident in the 2000 block of Bahia Drive.
Jones’ mother, Ida Perkins, had called police from a neighbor’s phone after her son cut the phone lines in their house, police spokesman David Keith said. She told them her son had been acting strangely and appeared mentally unstable, Keith said.
Officers confronted Jones in a bedroom and tried to disarm him with pepper spray and beanbag rounds, Keith said.
“They attempted to use less than lethal force, but at that point the incident escalated and shots were fired,” he added.
It was the fifth fatal officer-involved shooting in Oxnard this year. Most recently, officers shot and killed a 27-year-old man who pointed a gun at them during a robbery at a doughnut shop in July.
Keith said the shootings can be traced directly to the number of mentally ill people on the street, some of whom are carrying weapons.
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