Jewish Man’s Death After California Protest Clash Is Under Investigation

As a fatal clash between suburban protesters in Southern California threatened to become an international incident on Tuesday, the authorities said that it wasn’t “exactly crystal clear” how a 69-year-old Jewish man died from an altercation with a pro-Palestinian demonstrator over the weekend.

At a packed news conference, Jim Fryhoff, the Ventura County sheriff, called for calm and said his office was investigating whether the death should be criminally charged as a homicide and hate crime.

But his office had not made an arrest in the case, which stemmed from a dispute on Sunday afternoon amid dueling demonstrations at an intersection in Thousand Oaks, Calif., a suburb about 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

Sheriff Fryhoff said investigators had questioned a 50-year-old man from the nearby suburb of Moorpark who was protesting on Sunday in support of Palestinians and whose house they searched on Monday. But, he added, the authorities were still trying to sort out the events that led up to the death of the Jewish protester, Paul Kessler.

Witnesses said Mr. Kessler got into an argument with the pro-Palestinian demonstrator on Sunday and had fallen during the altercation, sustaining a head injury, according to the sheriff. He added that Mr. Kessler was conscious and responsive when law enforcement officers arrived at the scene, and at the hospital when they spoke to him again.

Mr. Kessler died early Monday, and an autopsy by the Ventura County Medical Examiner’s Office determined the cause to be a blunt force injury to the back of his head.

Sheriff Fryhoff said that surveillance footage and other video obtained at the scene did not provide a clear view of the encounter, and that witnesses interviewed in the immediate aftermath gave “conflicting statements” — disagreeing, for example, on what had caused Mr. Kessler to fall and who had instigated the conflict.

At Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks, the Conservative synagogue where Mr. Kessler and his wife were members, Senior Rabbi Ari Averbach said that the victim, a father of two grown children, “was not there as, like, some ongoing counterprotester looking for trouble,” but had accompanied a neighbor to the rally of about 100 people, at a local intersection anchored by a gas station and an office park.

“It’s the big intersection in our town, and it was one of those places where people go to protest, and other people roll their eyes as they drive by,” Rabbi Averbach said, noting that the synagogues and mosques in the community generally had cordial relations.

Jonathan Oswaks, 69, said in a phone interview on Monday night that he first met Mr. Kessler a week before the incident when they went to observe a similar pro-Palestinian protest. They resolved to counterprotest the next week at the intersection in Thousand Oaks, Mr. Oswaks said.

“We’ve been here, we’ve seen what this is all about,” Mr. Oswaks said of their decision. “We need to show up with people and Israeli flags.”

The pair met again on Sunday around 2 p.m., an hour before the pro-Palestinian rally was scheduled to begin, Mr. Oswaks said. He and Mr. Kessler then split up and stood on opposite sides of Westlake Boulevard, intending to “occupy space,” he said, with Mr. Kessler holding an Israeli flag.

As the pro-Palestinian demonstrators began to gather, a man whom Mr. Oswaks believed he recognized from the previous week’s protest began yelling into his ear with a megaphone, Mr. Oswaks said. The man then crossed the road and approached Mr. Kessler. Mr. Oswaks said that he saw the man swing his megaphone toward Mr. Kessler but was not sure if Mr. Kessler had been struck.

Dr. Chris R. Young, the Ventura County medical examiner, said on Tuesday that his autopsy had determined that Mr. Kessler suffered “nonlethal injuries” to the left side of his face, as well as blunt force trauma to the back of his head consistent with a fall. He said that he had deemed it a homicide — meaning that another individual contributed to Mr. Kessler’s death or was directly responsible — but that his medical determination was different from the criminal definition of homicide.

“We’re still waiting to see evidence of what occurred in that interaction and whether or not there was a blow to the face that caused the fall, or if Mr. Kessler fell without that being the precipitating event,” Sheriff Fryhoff said.

Word of Mr. Kessler’s fall ricocheted quickly across communities that were already on edge. Several mourners brought flowers and lit candles on Monday night on a ledge outside the Shell gas station near where the altercation occurred.

Rabbi Michael Barclay, of the nearby Temple Ner Simcha, said on Monday evening that he had been urging congregants not to share rumors and that he had previously discouraged community members from counterprotesting at pro-Palestinian demonstrations to avoid confrontations.

Hussam Ayloush, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations office in Los Angeles, denounced all violence and urged people to avoid “sensationalizing such a tragedy for political gains or spreading rumors that could unnecessarily escalate tensions that are already at an all-time high.”

“We urge everyone to wait for the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office to complete its investigation before drawing any conclusions,” Mr. Ayloush said in a statement. “Our thoughts are with the family and the Jewish community during this difficult time.”

The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles pointed to recent instances of antisemitic crimes in the region, which have rattled Jewish residents in Southern California.

“The fact of the matter is there is now a Jewish man who is dead,” said Rabbi Noah Farkas, the president and chief executive of the federation. “And here we are again as a Jewish community, frightened, terrified to express ourselves, to be ourselves.”

Livia Albeck-Ripka contributed reporting from Los Angeles, and Sergio Olmos from Thousand Oaks.