Police identify man who died on sidewalk following altercation

Eugene police said Saturday that the man who collapsed and died Friday night on a west Eugene sidewalk was James Earl Jacobsen Jr., 33, of Eugene.

Police received a 911 call just after 7 p.m. Friday reporting a man yelling for help in the 4500 block of Woodsboro Street, Lt. Sam Kamkar said. The man, Jacobsen, was involved in a fight a block away on Liberty Street, Kamkar said.

Police said they didn’t know exactly what caused Jacobsen’s death.

Asked if Jacobsen sustained any wounds in the fight, Kamkar said he couldn’t comment on that.

However, two residents in the Bethel area neighborhood where the incident happened said Jacobsen had a small, deep wound about the size of a dime on the back of his head.

“I can’t imagine what it could have been (that caused it),” said Bobby Dvorak, 21, standing Saturday by the bloodstain on the sidewalk where he and roommate Mallisa Stimson performed CPR on Jacobsen before paramedics arrived.

Dvorak and Stimson, who rent a home at the corner of Woodsboro and Philip streets, said they heard Jacobsen yelling for a friend down the street about 7 p.m. Friday.

“He yelled, ‘Chris!’ over and over again,” Dvorak said. The friend, who lives a few houses down the block on Woodsboro, near where it intersects with Haven Street, came to the scene but didn’t say much, Dvorak said.

A knock on the door Saturday of the home where Dvorak and Stimson said “Chris” lives brought a man to a window to look through the blinds, but no one opened the door.

Jacobsen’s death is the second in a two-week period in west Eugene in which someone died after being involved in a fight, Kamkar said.

On June 21, William James McKnight, 41, was involved in an altercation in the 2200 block of Roosevelt Boulevard. The cause of death in that case is still yet to be determined, and no charges have been filed, Kamkar said.

Not that police think the June 21 incident and Friday’s incident are related, but it’s a bit odd, he said.

“Never in all of my years have I seen that,” Kamkar said.

Asked who Jacobsen was fighting with Friday, police spokeswoman Melinda McLaughlin said, “We can’t discuss that right now.”

Dvorak said Jacobsen was foaming at the mouth and turning blue, but the CPR he performed, per instructions from a 911 operator, seemed “to bring him back a bit.”

Paramedics arrived and performed CPR, but Jacobsen was gone within five or 10 minutes, said Dvorak, a 2010 graduate of Willamette High School.

Dvorak said Jacobsen had a shaved head and goatee and a tattoo of a cross on his left shoulder.

“It was just weird giving CPR to the guy, and then he dies,” Dvorak said.

Reporter Diane Dietz contributed to this report.