JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A late-night random stabbing attack Tuesday at a construction site at I-295 and North Main Street escalated into a police chase and shooting, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
JSO Chief of Investigations Alan Parker said that around 10:42 p.m. Tuesday, a driver, later identified by police as 39-year-old Benjamin Kubi, was driving through a construction zone when he stopped his car and stabbed a construction worker with a knife.
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The worker had been directing traffic through the construction zone, and Parker said the attack appears to have been random.
The injured construction worker ran to his foreman for help, and the foreman alerted off-duty JSO Sgt. Ralaska Hoover, who was working security at the site. She immediately pursued Kubi in her car, Parker said.
Sgt. Torrie Robinson got the call and joined the pursuit, which lasted over 2 miles to Duval Station Road until Kubi stopped his car and got out, Parker said.
Robinson and Hoover gave commands to Kubi, but he charged at Hoover with the knife, and one of the sergeants used a Taser on Kubi, Parker said.
It wasn’t effective, and Kubi got up and continued to run at Hoover with the knife in his hand, Parker said, explaining that that’s when Robinson shot Kubi several times, and Hoover fired her weapon as well.
Parker and Sheriff T.K. Waters said that the entire encounter from the time Kubi got out of the car to the shots fired as roughly 12 seconds.
“She had to actually retreat from him because he was chasing her before he went down from the gunshot wounds. It was a pretty scary situation for both of the sergeants,” Sheriff T.K. Waters said.
Kubi was taken to the hospital in critical condition. Neither sergeant was injured.
“When we respond to something that is either deadly toward a civilian or us, we are going to take action and you are ultimately going to lose,” Waters said. “Don’t do these kinds of things, and we will not have these issues.”
Hoover has been with JSO for 16 years, and Robinson, who was first hired as a corrections officer, has served with the department for 15 years, Parker said.
This was the first officer-involved shooting for both and marks the eighth officer-involved shooting for JSO this year.
The construction worker who was stabbed in the chest/stomach area was taken to a hospital and is expected to be OK.
This was not Kubi’s first encounter with law enforcement.
Just last month, Kubi was accused of threatening a JSO officer at a traffic crash scene, mimicking pulling a gun trigger and saying, “You are a dead man.” The officer said, “What did you say to me?” and Kubi repeated what he’d said and then drove off.
Despite identifying his vehicle, officers couldn’t find Kubi after the incident.
He was also arrested in 2019 on domestic battery charges.