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.
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A construction worker who was directing traffic said he tried to wave the car on, but the driver asked him something he couldn’t understand. The worker told the driver to move on, and the driver said something else that he couldn’t understand, then opened his car door and removed something from under the driver’s seat.
Police said Kubi then stabbed the construction worker with a long, thin knife in his right inner arm/bicep area near his brachial artery.
The worker needed stitches and was treated at UF Health but was expected to be OK.
Parker said the attack appears to have been random.
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A News4JAX Insider shared a video on SnapJAX showing the chaotic moments after the stabbing attack. A construction worker can be seen running away from the car stopped in the construction zone.
Police said 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.
The cellphone video, which was filmed from a car behind the stopped car, then shows Ralaska confronting the driver with her hand on her weapon as he jumps back in his car.
As the driver pulls away, a voice can be heard shouting “He just stabbed him!”
The video then shows Ralaska jumping in her car and speeding away after the driver.
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 Robinson used a Taser on Kubi, JSO 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 was 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 and was treated at UF Health for non-life-threatening gunshot wounds. 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.
Kubi was booked while still in the hospital on a charge of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, jail records show.
This was not Kubi’s first encounter with law enforcement. Last month, police say, he threatened an officer, and in 2019 he was arrested on domestic battery charges.