BERKELEY — As city officials continued to review details of the chaotic finish of this week’s City Council discussion of the Urban Shield first responder exercise, a 73-year-old retired school teacher gave this newspaper an account of his injury during a confrontation between demonstrators and police in the street outside.

Berkeley resident Lew Williams attended the June 20 council meeting at Longfellow Middle School that ran into early Wednesday morning, when the council voted to continue, at least for this year, the city’s participation in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security-sponsored Urban Shield.

Several protesters stormed the dais, and two were arrested. Other protesters gathered outside the school on Derby Street, where police officers and more than a dozen vehicles were positioned.

“I went out on the street. I saw the police cars out there,” Williams recounted on Friday. “I was standing in the street. I was pushed by policemen wielding batons. Somebody – and I don’t know who it was; it was chaotic – knocked my glasses off, and they fell to the ground.”

“So I saw them on the ground,” Williams continued. “I was eager to retrieve them — miraculously, they weren’t trampled. So I reached down, picked them up, and I was in the process of straightening myself up and putting them in my pocket, and I felt a blow, and a sharp pain on the top of my head. Blood began streaming down my face.

“People led me to the curb and I sat down,” Williams said. “Other demonstrators put gauze on my wound. A reporter with a cell phone recorded me.”

A photo of Williams appeared on SFGate.com; the caption says he was struck in the head with a police baton.

Williams went home Wednesday morning, and woke up later with a headache. When it persisted on Thursday, he went to the Kaiser Oakland emergency room, he said.

“They checked the bloody knot on top of my head, and gave me a scan,” Williams said Friday. “They couldn’t detect any damage. Said if there were any complications, I was to get back in touch with them.”

Earlier on Friday, city spokesman Matthai Chakko said that outside, after the council meeting, “Crowds circled the police cars and demanded release of the suspects” who had been arrested inside moments earlier.

“Officers told people verbally to back off, ” Chakko said. “When they did not, people were pushed out of the way to allow the patrol cars to leave.”

Chakko said that two people were confirmed injured: a police officer with an unspecified injury to the hand, and a protester.

“I don’t know if that person got injured by a fellow protester or because of signs that they were carrying,” Chakko said, adding: “That (injured) person said on video that he did not see what hit him.

“Surrounding a police car and demanding the release of someone inside, that is not acceptable,” Chakko added.

Later on Friday, Williams said that while he did not see who hit him, “there was a cop in front of me with a baton. There were no picket signs or anything else around me that could have inflicted such a sharp blow — no rocks, no sticks no picket signs. There were only barehanded protesters around me.

“I can’t imagine any other way to have been hit other than by a police baton. It’s inconceivable to me.”