VENTURA : Man Stabbed After High-Speed Chase

A 19-year-old Ventura man was hospitalized Sunday after being stabbed several times following a high-speed chase through Ventura by two carloads of men believed to be Oxnard gang members, Ventura police said.

Omar S. Zapata sustained several abdominal stab wounds and was in serious condition at Ventura County Medical Center, a nursing supervisor said.

Police said Zapata was one of at least four passengers in a vehicle driven by Joseph Barretto, 19, of Ventura. About 2:20 a.m. Sunday, they encountered the alleged gang members in two vehicles at West Vince and Olive streets in Ventura.

After the occupants of the two cars “yelled Oxnard gang statements,” police said, Barretto’s vehicle was chased along Main Street through the downtown business district at speeds up to 75 m.p.h.

Finally, in the 1300 block of Main Street, Barretto’s car was rammed by one of the two cars, causing his vehicle to slam into a light pole. Witnesses told police that suspects from the two cars vandalized Barretto’s car, bashing in the windows and stealing the stereo.

Officers found Zapata in nearby shrubbery bleeding from stab wounds. No immediate arrests were made, police said.

In a separate incident about 1:30 a.m. Sunday, two Oxnard men were booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon after allegedly firing a shot from a limousine on the Ventura Freeway in Camarillo.

Benjamin Medina Puga and Scott Guerrero of Oxnard, both 18, were arrested, sheriff’s deputies said.

Katienda Sawyer, 19, of Westlake was driving south on the freeway with three passengers when the back seat occupant of a southbound white limousine fired at her car, deputies said.

Sawyer, who was uninjured, pulled off the freeway and called the limousine’s license plate number in to sheriff’s deputies. The vehicle was stopped in Thousand Oaks without incident, deputies said. The driver of the limousine, which was rented in Oxnard, was released.