Slain Man Called ‘Hit Squad’ Member

A Simi Valley woman testified Monday that her lover, who boasted that he had served on a Guatemalan assassination squad, was slain during a drunken brawl last summer by Oscar Garnica-Vargas.

Garnica-Vargas and Julio Arriaza, both 27, went on trial on murder charges in Ventura County Superior Court Monday in the July 19, 1989, stabbing death of Ezequiel Romero, 37.

Octavila Pineda testified in Spanish, through an interpreter, that Romero was her lover. She said she rented living quarters to him, the defendants and 10 other Guatemalans last year at a home in the 1500 block of Sitka Avenue.

Pineda testified that Romero often boasted that he had killed people while a member of a feared death squad called the Judicial. Romero fled to the United States in the early ‘80s when the political tide turned against him back home, Pineda said.

Romero and Garnica-Vargas began arguing on the night of July 19 over money that they had earned in Los Angeles that day by selling tires they had reconditioned in the back yard, she testified.

The quarrel grew heated and moved outside, where the men began trading blows and wrestling in the street, she recalled. There, Pineda testified, Romero put Garnica-Vargas into a chokehold that left him weak before Arriaza intervened and pulled Romero away.

Pineda said Garnica-Vargas went into the house and rummaged through a silverware drawer before returning with one of her kitchen knives, which he allegedly used in the killing.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald C. Glynn showed Pineda a stained, 10-inch carving knife encased in a plastic evidence bag and asked if it was the weapon.

“This is it,” she testified.

Garnica-Vargas and most of the other Guatemalans living at the single-story stucco house feared Romero, who kept a sawed-off shotgun, Pineda said. She testified that Romero bragged that he used to check the Guatemalan government files of the people he was ordered to kill and would kill only those whom he believed deserved to die.

Testimony is scheduled to continue at 10 a.m. this morning and the case is expected to go to the jury by the end of the week, attorneys said.