Letter May Tie Man to 2nd Attack

A few weeks before he was arrested in the drive-by slaying of a Thousand Oaks woman last month, 18-year-old Scott M. Kastan wrote a letter boasting of his involvement in an earlier drive-by shooting, according to Ventura County court records.

“Bullets are flying. You’d be proud,” Kastan allegedly wrote to fellow gang member Joseph Esparza, who was being held in the Ventura County Jail.

Now Kastan is in jail himself, along with co-defendant Patrick Strickland, 22. In an indictment returned Thursday, the Ventura County grand jury accused Kastan and Strickland of murder and attempted murder in the death of Jennifer Jordan, 20, who was struck by gunfire as she stood outside a Thousand Oaks home May 31.

The two men are being held on $250,000 bail each and will be arraigned Tuesday in Ventura County Superior Court. Kristen McLuckie, who had been charged in the case, was not indicted and has been released, investigators said.

After Kastan’s arrest June 2, investigators said they learned of a letter he sent to Esparza last month. They obtained a search warrant and found the letter in Esparza’s cell, according to court papers that say the letter was written by Kastan.

With the letter was a newspaper clipping about an April 27 drive-by shooting on Greenwich Drive in Thousand Oaks.

“There was a bunch of us there but I got crazy,” said the writer, who used Kastan’s gang name, Flaco. “Who’s gonna be crazy enough to shoot them? Big Flaco, that’s who.”

Next to where the article reported that nobody was hurt, Kastan allegedly wrote: “Oops. Next time.”

Kastan, Strickland and Esparza all belong to a Thousand Oaks gang known as the Small Town Hoods, investigators say. In the letter, according to the documents, Kastan describes his feelings about the gang and his neighborhood.

“It’s like when it’s for the ‘hood, this juice surges in me like electricity and then it’s on . . . the ‘hood is my heart,” he wrote.

Kastan is accused of being the triggerman in the shooting of Jordan, who lived at the Houston Drive house with her boyfriend and 17-month-old daughter. Investigators say Jordan was not a gang member, but her boyfriend associated with members of a gang known as the Houston Hoods.

Jordan was struck by gunfire intended for two visitors, investigators said. The shots were fired by someone who stood up through a car’s open sunroof as the car drove past, witnesses said.

A confidential informant later told police that he had overheard Kastan saying he had been involved in a shooting and planned to leave town, according to sworn statements filed with the court.

The court papers also say that after he was arrested, Kastan admitted to his mother that he had been present at the shooting and told her that her boyfriend’s gun was the murder weapon.

He urged her to dispose of the gun, according to the sworn statements, but investigators searched the home immediately and seized a .38-caliber handgun and ammunition that they found in a dresser drawer.

Jordan’s daughter, Allison, is being cared for by the victim’s sister, who lives in Bakersfield, a family spokesman said Friday.