Jeff Knepper, the UA student shot in the head by police with a beanbag round during the riot on Fourth Avenue, said he wasn't immediately aware of how serious his wound was.

"I could see the blood falling," Knepper said Thursday, adding that two women came to his aid after he got shot. "They asked if I was OK. At first I said, 'I'm fine,' and they were flipping out. I said, 'OK, maybe I'm not OK.' "

The two women used some clothing to put pressure on Knepper's eye and helped lead him to the nearest fire truck, Knepper said. He doesn't know who they were.

Click to view video Sgt. David Azuelo of the Tucson Police Department SWAT team shows Arizona Daily Star reporter J. Barrios the various less than lethal weapons used by Tucson Police. View our Photo Gallery to see images from the April 2nd riot.

Several hours later, doctors surgically removed his left eye because of the extensive damage caused by the "less-than-lethal" round fired by police.

Knepper, 19, has filed a complaint with the Tucson Police Department because of his injury. He has hired attorney Carl Piccarreta to represent him.

Knepper, who is from Colorado and is studying business at the University of Arizona, said he was near East Eighth Street and North Fourth Avenue on April 2. Knepper said he was trying to get out of the area when he looked over his left shoulder and was struck by the beanbag.

Knepper said he is still trying to grasp everything that happened that night - including finding the two women who helped him to thank them.

Although he cannot say he's angry with police, he said he doesn't understand how officers could fire weapons at people trying to leave the area.

"I guess I'm more than anything just shocked," Knepper said. He said he's planning on returning home to Colorado for the summer but will be back at the UA in the fall.

He had the last stitches removed from his eye this week, and doctors are preparing to fit him with a prosthetic eye, Knepper said.

Determining if Tucson police used "too many" or "not enough" less-than-lethal munitions during the riot is a tough call to make, said a national expert on crowd-control situations.

Police said this week they used 430 rounds of less-than-lethal ammunition in about a four-hour period April 2.

Capt. Richard Odenthal, a crowd-control expert with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department who teaches for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, said the biggest thing to consider in evaluating a crowd-control situation are the "rules of engagement" laid out by the responsible agency.

"Of course, when all is said and done, you have to try and see how effective it was," Odenthal said.

Odenthal said it's difficult to judge whether a police agency is justified in using less-than-lethal munitions.

Some police departments, like the Miami-Dade police, use none.

In Quebec, where Odenthal helped coordinate crowd control this month during the Summit of the Americas free-trade conference, police used many more less-than-lethal weapons against protesters than did Tucson police.

"It was way more than 400 rounds," Odenthal said.

In December 1999, an estimated 50,000 World Trade Organization protesters poured into downtown Seattle.

That city's police force used sting-ball grenades, beanbag rounds and wooden baton rounds to disperse protesters. Seattle police used more than 800 rounds of munitions that are comparable to the ones used by Tucson police.

But police in Seattle also used several hundred rounds of chemical agents and more than 150 cans of pepper spray.

Officer Pam McCammon, spokeswoman for the Seattle Police Department, said the department uses less-than-lethal weapons and ammunition in order to move and disperse crowds, not to cause deaths or injuries.