3 Jacksonville police shootings in 9 days: JSO said latest suspect stabbed

In the third police shooting in just over a week in Jacksonville, two officers shot a man the Sheriff’s Office said stabbed a road construction worker unprovoked, led them on a police chase and tried to attack a sergeant.

It all started about 10:45 p.m. Tuesday when a man driving through a road construction site at Interstate 295 and Main Street got out of his vehicle and “for whatever reason” stabbed a worker who was helping lead drivers through the traffic, Chief Alan Parker said. The crew member ran to a foreman who alerted a sheriff’s officer, Sgt. Ralaska Hoover, who was working there off-duty.

The suspect had gotten back into his vehicle, so she got into hers and activated her lights and sirens in pursuit. Another officer, Sgt. Torrie Robinson, in the area joined in the short chase that ended in the 400 block of Duval Station Road when the suspect stopped and got out his car, Parker said.

“They were giving him commands, ‘Get on the ground, let’s see your hands,'” Parker said. “He approached with a knife and then started to charge at Sergeant Hoover. She tried to Tase him with her issued Taser, it was ineffective, and then he actually picked up his pace and was running at her with his knife in his hand to attack her. Sgt. Robinson engaged him, shot him multiple times, and Sgt. Hoover transitioned from her Taser, she also shot him.”

“From the time he got out of that car, it was roughly 12 seconds before the whole thing was over,” Parker said.

He was given medical treatment and was in critical condition. He has been identified as 39-year-old Benjamin Mpolesha Kubi. Parker said he had done something similar in October and threatened an officer.

“Like a month ago he pulled up to one of our officers that was working a traffic crash in traffic,” the chief said. “He pulled up to him and did the finger thing [pointing like a gun] and basically he said, ‘You’re a dead man.’ The officer said what did you say to me, and he repeated himself and then he ended up driving off.”

The officer was able to get his license tag and filed an information report, but there had been no other contact with him, Parker said.

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Parker said the construction worker is expected to be OK. He said they have no idea about a motive: “It seems random.”

For both officers, it was their first shooting, the chief said. Hoover has been with the Sheriff’s Office 16 years and Robinson 15.

What were the other recent Jacksonville police shootings?

In the previous police shooting on Friday, an officer shot a military veteran’s PTSD-issued dog that had bitten him, and a fragment from the gunshots struck the 33-year-old owner’s shin, according to the Sheriff’s Office. The dog was expected to live.

The officer had been called to an armed dispute between two women in the area of College Street and Willow Branch Avenue. A homeless woman had accused the veteran, who was with her dog and 4-year-old daughter, of trying to steal her bicycle and they got into a heated argument, according to the incident report. The veteran advised she had a gun, and police were called. When the officer was speaking with her, that’s when the dog attacked him.

In a Nov. 11 shooting, a parent pretended to be her 13-year-old daughter when an 18-year-old was inappropriately texting her and arranged for them to meet at a Mcduff Avenue Popeyes restaurant. When the mother arrived with her daughter and son, the older teen threatened them with a gun, the Sheriff’s Office previously said. An arriving officer located him behind the restaurant and shot him when the Sheriff’s Office said the 18-year-old pulled the gun on him. Cerry Rodriques Banks III was treated at a hospital and transferred to jail where he remains in lieu of $700,000 bail on multiple charges.

The latest shooting marks the eighth suspect shot by Jacksonville police this year, with three being fatal. The Sheriff’s Office currently does not count the woman because it may have been a piece of concrete or something else when the bullet hit the ground.

Last year 13 suspects were shot, nine fatally, according to Times-Union records.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Random stabbing of road worker leads to Jacksonville police shooting

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