Gang Clash Blamed for Rampage at Empty House : Crimes: Police say a shouting match preceded the attack. Shots were fired into the home, and all its windows were broken.

In what police describe as a clash between neo-Nazi Skinheads and a rival gang of Pierpont Rats, about 20 youths kicked in the front door of a Ventura house, fired shots into the home and broke every window with pipes and baseball bats.

No one was inside the small, well-kept house in the 1800 block of Ocean Avenue Saturday evening when suspected Skinheads ransacked the house and vandalized two cars parked nearby.

“My kids were outside playing and I brought them all in when I heard gunshots,” neighbor Nancy Lopez said Sunday. “I checked with the Police Department before we moved in, and they said this was a quiet and safe neighborhood.”

Sgt. Carl Handy, who heads the Ventura Police Department’s special gang task force, said detectives have worked through the weekend to find and arrest those responsible.

“We have a zero-tolerance policy for gangs in Ventura,” Handy said. “Even if there were no injuries resulting in this incident, we want to interdict this kind of thing as rapidly as possible. We take this stuff very seriously.”

Steve Lyons, 22, who lives with his girlfriend in the blue-and-white house, said Sunday that he was shocked to find the damage to the house and his belongings. He said he believed that members of the white supremacist Skinhead gang were looking for a previous tenant--a Skinhead who had left the group--when they vandalized the house that he has rented for two months.

“We’re going to move out of here for sure,” said Lyons, who said he is a full-time cosmetology student at the Lu Ross Beauty Academy in Ventura. “The landlady should have told us there were gang members here before we moved in.” Lyons estimated damage to his stereo, speakers and television at $1,000.

“There was glass everywhere,” his girlfriend, 20-year-old Heidi Nelson, said.

But Handy said Lyons not only knew who lived in the house before him, but that he associates with members of a rival gang of predominantly white youths, the Pierpont Rats.

“If he wants to claim ignorance, that’s fine,” Handy said. “But I’m not buying it.”

Details were still sketchy Sunday, but accounts from neighbors and police indicate that Lyons and Nelson were in their front yard drinking beer Saturday afternoon when friends joined them. Handy said the friends are believed to be members of the Pierpont Rats.

Later in the afternoon, youths believed to be connected to the neo-Nazi group, the Skinheads, came to the house and the two groups shouted at each other.

Lyons and his friends then left the house, Handy said, and the Skinheads returned to vandalize the home and break windows in cars on the street.

He said he believed that the youths parked their cars near the Poinsettia Bowl on Thompson Boulevard west of Seaward Avenue. From there, they walked to Lyons’ house. The residence is in a two-block stretch of apartments and duplexes in a neighborhood otherwise characterized by small, well-cared-for homes.

About 6:30 p.m., the youths bashed in car windows and then shattered every window in the house. They kicked in the front door and fired a small handgun into the living room. Neighbors said they heard seven shots, but only two bullet marks were visible in the knotty pine living room paneling on Sunday.

Lyons said the youths painted graffiti on a trash receptacle behind the house, that read SHD-1, gang shorthand meaning Skinhead dogs. But Handy said police have not seen the writing and did not believe that it had been spray-painted Saturday night.

The incident frightened some neighbors. Lopez said her husband was busy Sunday securing the windows of their apartment.

“We just don’t feel very safe anymore,” she said.

Other neighbors across the street said that a known Skinhead lived in the house Lyons rents until about three months ago.

The neighborhood has been quiet since the reputed Skinhead left--with the exception of Saturday night parties at some homes, neighbors said.

Handy confirmed that one Skinhead member had moved out of Lyons’ house a few months ago. He said there are still some gang members who live in the area. But he said police have had few problems with the neighborhood.

“We don’t have the Los Angeles urban gang problem yet in Ventura, and it’s our job to make sure we don’t ever have it,” Handy said.