Oakland cop shoots suspect dead after being attacked with chain

Police are seen at the scene of a police involved shooting at MacArthur Boulevard and Van Buren Avenue in Oakland, Ca. on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2015. The incident left the involved police officer in the hospital and the suspect dead at the scene. less Police are seen at the scene of a police involved shooting at MacArthur Boulevard and Van Buren Avenue in Oakland, Ca. on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2015. The incident left the involved police officer in the hospital ... more Photo: Dorothy Edwards, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Dorothy Edwards, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close Oakland cop shoots suspect dead after being attacked with chain 1 / 10 Back to Gallery

An Oakland police officer shot and killed a man Thursday after he hit her in the head multiple times with a metal chain in the city’s Adams Point neighborhood, officials and witnesses said.

The deadly encounter marked the sixth police shooting this year in Oakland — four of which have been fatal, during an unusually violent summer of clashes between officers and armed suspects.

Police were first called around 6:30 a.m. Thursday to investigate reports that a trespassing suspect assaulted a resident in a garage on the 200 block of MacArthur Boulevard and then fled the scene, authorities said.

Then two hours later, a chain-wielding man in his 20s, believed to be the person police were called about in the earlier trespassing incident, jumped in front of an officer’s cruiser near MacArthur Boulevard and Van Buren Avenue, said Officer Johnna Watson, an Oakland police spokeswoman.

When the officer got out of her car, the suspect, who was not identified, immediately began landing repeated blows about her head and face, prompting her to draw her gun and squeeze off several rounds, striking the suspect and killing him, Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent said at a news conference.

Video: Raw Video: Oakland Police Shoot, Kill Suspect; Officer Seriously Hurt

Officer’s injuries

Whent said investigators reviewed footage from a body camera worn by the officer, which matched witness accounts of the attack. “It looked very, very dangerous,” he said.

The officer — an 18-year veteran of the force the department did not identify — was taken to Highland Hospital in Oakland. Witnesses at the scene said she was “bleeding heavily from her face.”

She suffered “serious head and face injuries” that are non-life-threatening, police said. As of Thursday afternoon, investigators had not yet interviewed the officer to get her account of the attack.

Acquaintances of the dead suspect, who went to the scene but did not want to be identified, said he suffered from an unspecified mental illness. Whent said the man was “known in the neighborhood” where he died.

Just six minutes before the shooting, Oakland police were issued a radio bulletin that a man in the same block had assaulted someone with a chain at 6:35 a.m. A dispatcher warned officers that the suspect “has been armed with a knife in the past.”

Oakland author Nayomi Munaweera, 42, was walking back to her car around 8:40 a.m. after working out at a gym when she heard the gunshots. She said she walked past the officer, who was sitting on the curb, crying and shaking while bleeding from the head, and then spotted a bleeding man stomach-down on the ground next to a chain.

“He was bleeding from his mouth. He was twitching a lot. Mucus and blood was coming out of his mouth,” she said.

Paramedics took the officer away in an ambulance while police started CPR on the suspect, she said.

The officer got on the police radio at 8:36 a.m., sounding breathless and saying, “I need Code 3 medical. I’ve been struck in the head by the suspect — MacArthur and Van Buren.” She later added, “The suspect needs an ambulance too - I’ve still got him at gunpoint!”

The gunfire drew neighbors out of their houses, and they stood behind crime-scene tape closely watching police and investigators.

Police and the Alameda County district attorney’s office are investigating.

Oakland cops had not fatally shot anyone for two years until the June 6 shooting of Demouria Hogg, 30. Police say they shot Hogg after he reached for a gun when officers found him passed out behind the wheel of a BMW at the end of an Interstate 580 off-ramp — about four blocks east of Thursday’s shooting.

Drawing scrutiny

Since Hogg’s killing, Oakland police have fatally shot three other people in less than three months.

The cases have drawn intense scrutiny from police watchdog groups in Oakland, prompting Whent to offer to show body-camera footage of the incidents to family members of the men.

Police privately showed members of the media body-camera video taken at two deadly police encounters — one of the shooting of carjacking suspect Nate Wilks, 24, on Aug. 12 and another involving Richard Linyard, 23, who, police said, died July 19 after getting wedged between two buildings while fleeing from officers. Whent showed the videos to dispel “misinformation” about the incidents.

Henry K. Lee and Evan Sernoffsky are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. E-mail: hlee@sfchronicle.com, esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @HenryKLee, @EvanSernoffsky