Riverside County, CA: UPDATE: Parents say man killed didn’t have rifle

A Riverside County sheriff’s deputy shot and killed a Hemet-area man whose girlfriend said he had shot her Tuesday night, sheriff’s officials said.
Authorities said the deputy fired when he saw the man raise a rifle.

The man’s parents, however, said Wednesday they believed the weapon was a BB gun.
A woman called 911 about 6 p.m. Tuesday, reporting her boyfriend had shot her in the head with a rifle after beating her and threatening to cut her throat with a piece of broken glass, Riverside County sheriff’s Sgt. Joe Borja said in written statement. She was calling from her home in the 43000 block of East Highway 74 in Valle Vista, east of Hemet.
The woman said her boyfriend, Kenneth Blomberg, 33, threatened to burn her house down and told her that “if deputies arrived, it would be a shootout,” Borja said.
Deputies found Blomberg hiding behind a bush in the backyard of a home a few miles away, in the 43000 block of Acacia Avenue.
Deputies ordered him to drop a rifle he was holding. “He raised the rifle in a threatening manner,” Borja said.

The deputy shot Blomberg once. Cal Fire and AMR paramedics gave first aid at the scene and took him to a hospital, where he died, Borja said.
The girlfriend, whose name was not released, was expected to recover from her injuries.
When Blomberg left his girlfriend’s home, he went to see his parents, Hector and Isabel Blomberg.
The couple said Wednesday afternoon that their son came to their house with a BB gun Tuesday evening, asking for a cigarette. Showing little emotion, they said he did not mention trouble with his girlfriend or that he was hiding from law enforcement.
“We don’t know what’s going on in his mind,” Isabel Blomberg said in a thick Argentinean accent. “He came in acting all crazy. I told him don’t do nothing stupid.”
Minutes later, they said, he went outside and was confronted by police.
The Blombergs were told at 3 a.m. that their son had been killed.
Riverside County sheriff’s officials did not provide clarification about what type of gun Kenneth Blomberg may have had.
Blomberg moved with his parents to Hemet in 1997. He lived in a mobile home off Florida Avenue and worked as a gardener. He had been with his girlfriend for about a year, his parents said.
The family — sitting stoically at their kitchen table Wednesday as they prepared to make funeral arrangements — said they had little information about how Blomberg was killed.
Until they learn more, they said they would not blame authorities for the shooting.
“They had to do their jobs to defend themselves if he did something right there where they had to shoot,” Hector Blomberg said. “We did not see it. We don’t know why.”
Sheriff’s officials would not name the deputy involved in the shooting.
Borja said in an email that the department would assess whether any threat was posed to the deputy before he is publicly identified.
The deputy was placed on paid administrative leave, per department policy, while the shooting is investigated.