Vallejo police kill man during rampage VALLEJO

A Vallejo police officer shot and killed a man early Sunday when the suspect placed the barrel of a rifle against another officer's stomach after a violent rampage during which he and a second man - both naked - set their home on fire, slaughtered an animal and broke car windows, authorities said.

When it was over, a 29-year-old Vallejo man was dead from police gunfire, a second man was in custody, and a neighborhood was reeling over the destruction.

Next-door neighbor Marvin Clouse said the two men were a couple and that the man in custody may have gone off his medication for schizophrenia.

"He thought he was the Messiah or something," Clouse said. "He would say, 'I'm God, (my partner) is God, we're going to save things, and the storm is coming.' "

Trying to burn down house

The slain man, meanwhile, "had no clue," Clouse said. "He did whatever (his partner) told him to. This behavior was self-destructive."

The drama began at 1:28 a.m. when many residents called 911 to report that two men were fighting and trying to burn down their home on the 2500 block of Alameda Drive, not far from Broadway and Redwood Street, said Vallejo police Sgt. Jeff Bassett. Neighbors also reported that the two were breaking the windows of their own parked cars, Bassett said.

Officers arrived several minutes later and saw a naked man running into the home, where smoke was visible inside, Bassett said. They confronted him and were trying to get him to comply with their orders when "a second man appeared from the back of the interior of the house with a rifle," Bassett said.

The man with the rifle "placed the barrel of the rifle directly against an officer's stomach," prompting another officer to open fire.

The gunman died at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center. His name was not released.

The rifle was recovered, police said. The weapon was loaded with a round in the chamber, Bassett said.

Police took the other man, a 28-year-old resident of the home, into custody. His name was also withheld.

The chaos unfolded rapidly. Immediately after the shooting, officers weren't sure if anyone else was inside the home, which was quickly filling up with smoke.

"As far as we know, we have all the suspects secured, but we can't get to the upstairs because of the fire," an officer reported on the radio. Referring to the Vallejo Fire Department, he added, "We need fire to roll in, deal with the fire, and then we can clear the rest of the house."

Officers feared that someone may have been hurt at the home. "We're trying to follow a blood trail back here, but we can't see," the officer said. "So there could possibly be somebody else injured somewhere."

But it turned out that no one was hurt. The blood that led from the home to the backyard was from a recently slaughtered animal, Bassett said. Clouse said he believed it may have been a pet chicken or duck.

Idiosyncratic couple

Police determined that one or both of the men shut down the power to their home, set their home on fire, broke windows inside and smashed their car windows, Bassett said.

Until the incident, the couple were "completely understanding people who did the best they could to keep the yard nice," Clouse said.

But they had their idiosyncrasies, he said. The man in custody is a practitioner of Wicca, a modern pagan religion, and ran an online business in which he would buy, fix and sell items. He espoused the planting of victory gardens, or food gardens, in the event that systems collapsed, Clouse said.

The slain man had a collection of 400 fluorescent lightbulbs in a shed in the backyard, Clouse said.

The incident is the sixth fatal officer-involved shooting in Vallejo since May. The city's interim police chief, Joseph Kreins, has traced the incidents to "individuals who seemingly are more willing to confront our officers with guns."