LSD-fueled rampage ends with 8 injured, suspect in critical condition
BODEGA BAY, Calif. July 7 2019 The man shot by a sheriff’s deputy at the Sonoma coast is a YouTube engineer, apparently experiencing a bad acid trip.
The drug-fueled rampage on the Fourth of July left eight people injured, including four of the friends Betai Koffi was vacationing with.
Koffi, 32, is hospitalized in critical condition after being shot at least three times.
He faces six felonies, including carjacking, multiple assaults, and two counts of attempted murder.
“LSD, acid, is not very common but it’s a very dangerous drug to use,” said Sonoma County Sheriff’s Sgt Spencer Crum.
“We’re really lucky that none of those victims died in this, really lucky.”
Koffi and five longtime friends, arrived in Bodega Harbor Wednesday for a five-day stay in a vacation rental.
The next day, members of the group consumed acid, and Koffi used seven times as much as his companions.
“Several members of his party took a half tab of acid, but Koffi took four doses of acid and had a really bad trip with it,” said Crum.
That trip ended in front of Claire Tamo’s house on Pelican Loop Road.
Thursday evening, just after 8 p.m., she heard officers shouting, then gunfire.
“They were yelling at him but apparently he didn’t stop, and they started shooting, probably about ten to twelve shots,” Tamo told KTVU.
Koffi’s Facebook page shows he is a Stanford educated software engineer who worked at Microsoft before moving to YouTube.
But with too much LSD in his system, he was hallucinating and aggressive.
He punched, stabbed, and choked his friends when they tried to calm him down, and keep him inside the rental.
Determined to leave, he crashed his rental car into the garage, and took off on foot.
He encountered a security guard who patrols the subdivision, and attacked him.
“He picks up a landscape light, yanks it out of the ground, and stabs the security guard with the pointed metal end of it,” described Sgt. Crum, “and knocked the security guard down.”
Koffi took off in the guard’s pickup truck and mowed down a couple walking along the street.
Then he drove onto a bluff, aiming for another couple, who dove out of his way, but a second woman was hit.
“He’s intentionally running people down, intentionally ran four people down,” said Crum, noting that home security cameras on several houses captured Koffi’s rampage.
“They couple that did not see it coming, who are walking arm in arm, it’s really sad,” said Crum. “And when you watch the video you can’t help feel emotional.”
Most residents of the quiet ocean-front community were unaware of the mayhem as it happened.
“Crazy, that is just crazy,” said longtime homeowner Richard Nogleberg, “and up on the hills, especially with the wind, we can’t hear anything, so we didn’t hear the gunshots.”
The bizarre incident ended swiftly, once a Sheriff’s deputy and CHP officer arrived.
By that time, Koffi had driven through a private yard, hit a wall, and continued back onto the road.
When he saw the law enforcement vehicles, he drove straight toward them, and the deputy who was out of his car, began firing.
Koffi continued accelerating and rammed the CHP cruiser, amid the gunshots.
He was hit at least three times through the windshield and airlifted to the hospital, along with the first woman he ran over.
“If this guy had kept going who knows what he could have done to other people,” said Crum, “because he was blatantly going after people, driving after them.”
The deputy who opened fire has four years with the sheriff’s department. Santa Rosa Police are conducting the investigation of the officer-involved-shooting, the county’s first in 2019.
Koffi’s friends were apologetic, and after giving statements to investigators, cut their holiday short and left Bodega Bay.
The sheriff’s department intends to release the deputy’s body-worn camera footage shortly.
KTVU
