PIMA COUNTY, AZ – A Pima County sheriff’s deputy was stabbed several times in the spine while responding to a call from a male who threatened to kill law enforcement officers.
Now the suspect is dead after another deputy shot him to stop the vicious assault.
On March 12, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department (PCSD) received a 911 call from a male who was later identified as 17-year-old Zakareya Ibrahim, KGUN9 reported.
Tucson police: Teen boy stabbed deputy's spine, face before another deputy killed him Pima County Sheriff's Department Deputy Taylor Dunn killed 17-year-old Zakareya Ibrahim after Ibrahim repeatedly stabbed Deputy Eduardo Toral. https://t.co/Ve2UIpLl57
— Annika Crawford (@AnnikaC28927272) March 21, 2022
The Pima Regional Critical Incident Team (PRCIT) said in the initial 911 report, the unidentified caller made several threats including “… I want to kill all you… I have scissors,” according to the report.
KGUN9 reported:
“Deputies arrived at the 3900 block of S. Rocky Peak Court just after 6:50 p.m. where the suspect, Zakareya Ibrahim, allegedly stabbed a one-year veteran of the PCSD Deputy Eduardo Toral, multiple times.
“According to PRCIT, prior to the stabbing, Ibrahim threw rocks at Toral’s patrol vehicle as he arrived.
“Toral gave several commands and asked Ibrahim to show his hands but [the suspect] ignored the commands.
“Ibrahim approached Toral through the open driver’s side door and stabbed Toral with a pair of scissors until another deputy, Taylor Dunn, arrived at the scene and shot Ibrahim.”
AZ Central reported:
“Ibrahim then repeatedly stabbed the deputy, severely damaging his spinal cord, face and shoulder before another deputy shot Ibrahim.
“Deputies rendered aid to Ibrahim and the deputy, though Ibrahim was later declared deceased at the scene.
“The media release included a picture of a pair of scissors discovered at the scene, though Tucson Police, which is handling the criminal investigation into the shooting, refused to specify whether they were the weapon involved in the stabbing.
“The injured deputy has been identified as Eduardo Toral, a one-year veteran of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.
“The deputy who shot and killed Ibrahim was identified as Taylor Dunn — a three-year veteran.”
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos spoke with KOLD News and suggested mental health may have played a role in this situation. The sheriff said:
″We still struggle with how we handle mental health. My personal belief is that dealing with mental health — that disorder — should not be a law enforcement function. There are people who are better equipped.”
Sheriff Nanos confirms that 17-year-old Zakareya Ibrahim was dealing with mental health issues when he called 911 Saturday night. https://t.co/2CG0Phwqad
— Mikala Novitsky (@MikaIaNovitsky) March 16, 2022
Sheriff Nanos also confirmed that the suspect was dealing with mental health issues when he called 911 Saturday night.
The sheriff told KOLD News that they have a crisis response team to handle mental health cases, but he believes the deputy on scene may not have had time to make that call:
“This thing happened so fast and unfolded so quickly, literally that young officer was in a fight for his life and did all he could, which was very little to prevent this from happening.”
The sheriff also noted that things need to change when it comes to handling mental health calls and that he extended condolences to Ibrahim’s family.
KOLD News spoke with neighbors of the suspect.
One neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous, told the news station:
″I would say there were four shots maybe five at the most. So I didn’t think too much about it and then I heard immediately afterward a blood-curdling scream. It was the most awful scream.”
The neighbor also said he always greeted the family whenever he saw them. The morning after the shooting, he spoke with the suspect’s father and recalled:
″He was very distraught obviously and he was telling me, ‘Not a good day. My boy was killed last night.’ It floored me because I know the kid.”
In this report, KOLD News did not include additional feedback from community members or acquaintances who are familiar with the severely injured deputy.
However, the news station pointed out that Ibrahim’s family is originally from Sudan and that they came to Tucson in 2012 and had close ties with the Refugee Resource Center, which helped them adapt to life in the U.S.
Co-director Randiesia Fletcher told KOLD News:
″We’re very sad about Zakareya Ibrahim passing away. He was one of the young boys in the community that we watched grow.”
KOLD News reported:
“The Refugee Resource Center as well as Ibrahim’s family are still hoping to uncover everything that happened the night he died.
“Sheriff Nanos says Deputy Eduardo Toral, who was stabbed with a pair of scissors, is still in serious condition, struggling with paralysis.
“The deputy who shot and killed Ibrahim has been identified as Taylor Dunn, a 3-year veteran of the department. The case is now being investigated by the newly-formed Pima Regional Critical Incident Team.”
Violence disruptors have been touted as a solution to reduce overall criminal violence.
We reported how frightened school staff and parents in Los Angeles were upset about a school’s decision to defund police despite rapes and violence on their property. Here is that report.
LOS ANGELES, CA — One of the largest school districts in the country decided to protect its students by getting rid of one-third of its campus police officers and replacing them with “violence disruptors” consisting of social workers and counselors.
Predictably, parents and staff members are now complaining about the alleged increase in violent crimes throughout the district’s schools, and they want more police back.
Parents, teachers and even administrative staff are speaking out against the Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) decision earlier this year to drastically defund law enforcement at its schools.
LAUSD’s school board eliminated $25 million from the school police budget and slashed the jobs of more than one-third of the school police officers.
CBS2 launched an investigation and reported that 133 positions from the school police were cut, including 70 sworn officers. Now there are 211 officers left on the district’s force.
Money originally intended for school police was then redirected to hiring “counselors and social workers to try and prevent violence,” according to CBS2’s report.
One individual, Joseph Williams, who was reported as being “with Black Lives Matter,” told CBS2 that police affected some students negatively:
“Police on campuses have a hugely negative effect on students of color.”
Williams also claimed that police were not helpful:
“There were fights in schools, there were incidents on school campuses when school police were still there.
“School police were not preventing, and in many cases they were escalating, and making some of these situations worse.”
According to the news station’s report, officers are no longer stationed on school campuses, and parents have expressed safety concerns.
CBS2 also obtained disturbing video footage showing students being assaulted allegedly inside LAUSD classrooms or elsewhere on school grounds:
“The videos obtained by CBS2 Investigates reveal what some parents are troubled about.
“One video shows a 15-year-old girl knocked to the ground and allegedly assaulted by students outside the school.
“‘I’m like what happened to my daughter? Please help me find out what’s going on,’ said Brittany Jackson, who arrived to pick her daughter up just moments after this incident occurred. ‘This is horrific, just to see that on school grounds.’
“Jackson said her daughter suffered a broken nose and a concussion, and now she’s worried about her two kids at the school.
“‘I don’t even feel safe sending them. I have to worry eight hours a day. Is my children going to make it back from school?’ Jackson said.
“That’s not the only school fight caught on camera either.
“Through police sources, CBS2 Investigates obtained video of fights inside classrooms and outside on school grounds. Some have said the rise in fights are related to a cut back in school police.”
However, the risk of airing complaints publicly is so dangerous that no one will sit down for an interview unless their identities are masked.
One LAUSD principal agreed to talk to CBS2, but only with a disguised face and voice.
The principal said the schools feel less safe. When asked if the school police were missed on campus, the principal replied:
“Tremendously. It’s a sense of safety.”
CBS2 also asked whether personal safety was an issue.
The principal confirmed:
“Constantly now. You think about it when you go to work, while you’re at work and going home. Is this worth it? They’re putting students, faculty, parents at risk.”
The LAUSD sought to protect their students by replacing many of the district’s police officers with counselors and social workers who are supposed to be violence disruptors.
However, it seems that with fewer police around, sex crimes and severe assaults against students and teachers are now being reported in the school district despite the presence of the violence disruptors.
CBS2 asked the school district for statistics on campus crimes, but it did not respond to the news station’s repeated requests.
However, police sources shared some crime reports, which show, for example, a criminal threat at Franklin High, assault and battery of a school employee at Marshal High and a sex crime at Muir Middle School, according to the report by CBS2:
“According to a bulletin from the Associated Administrators of LA, a union that represents administrators in the district, from August to October of 2021, there have been 108 assaults, with 16 students requiring transport to the hospital.
“Police sources also add there have been 44 weapons recovered, including five handguns and 32 knives, and it’s not just a matter of not enough officers to patrol.”
Gilbert Gamez, president of the Los Angeles School Police Association, the police officer’s union, claimed officers have been told by employees to stay off campus. He told CBS2:
“Our officers have been told, correct, to stay off campus.
“When they would go to campus, they were told by employees at the district that they need to leave or ‘what is your business here?’
“Some of the officers actually stop by and say, ‘Can we use the restroom?’ and they say, ‘No, you can’t. You’re not allowed on campus anymore.’”
When CBS2 tried to reach out to LAUSD School Police Chief Leslie Ramirez to ask questions, she twice cancelled an interview.
In addition, CBS2 reported it tried to interview school board members:
“The office of the school member Monica Garcia, who spearheaded the cutbacks, said she wasn’t available for an interview.
“In fact, all of the board members, through their offices, either said they weren’t available or didn’t respond to our requests.”
However, CBS2 caught up with school board member Nick Melvoin at a public event and asked him what should be done about administrators who are fearful and think police should be back on campus.
Melvoin simply blamed the poor use of “non-police resources” and still promoted reimagining public safety without law enforcement:
“We need to do a better job of providing non-police resources. We need to give schools different tools to reimagine public safety, so that our employees feel safe while our communities feel safe.”
Despite cutting positions and Melvoin’s statement to CBS2, LAUSD appears to be actively recruiting police officers.
On Twitter, LA School Police also had several posts this month indicating that it is hiring officers again.
A few weeks ago, another school district in California decided it had enough with reimagining public safety.
The Pomona Unified School District decided to bring police back after defunding them in July.
According to a report, there was a shooting nearby one of the district’s schools that left a 12-year-old boy injured last month.
The shooting caused the district to rethink its decision, and it decided to renew a contract with city police officers.
Days after the shooting, Superintendent Richard Martinez told the Los Angeles Times:
“An incident such as this drives us, as leaders, to examine our practices and our protocols in caring for students and staff in regards to mental health, conflict mediation, emergency procedures, communication facilities and safety.”
One parent who declined to give her name said she was relieved by the school board’s decision. She told Los Angeles Times that she had even considered pulling her sophomore son out of the district after its earlier decision to remove police from campus
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