Countywide : Report Backs Deputy in Fatal Shooting of Robbery Suspect

An off-duty Ventura County sheriff’s deputy was legally justified when he shot and killed a robbery suspect outside a fast-food restaurant in Oxnard, prosecutors announced Wednesday.

In a seven-page report on the Jan. 7 incident, Deputy Dist. Atty. James Ellison wrote that Deputy Rolland Ogawa was exercising his legal right to self-defense because Steven Gutierrez shot at him first.

Ogawa also was justified in his actions because Gutierrez was a fleeing felon and had been warned to stop, Ellison said.

The report said Gutierrez, 26, robbed the Popeye’s Chicken Restaurant on Ventura Road in Oxnard about 8 p.m., at one point threatening to shoot the assistant manager with his .45-caliber revolver if the restaurant employees did not cooperate.

Ogawa, 23, who was off-duty, drove into the parking lot by chance and was warned by a woman not to go into Popeye’s because it appeared that a robbery was taking place, the report said.

When Gutierrez ran from the restaurant, Ogawa identified himself as a sheriff’s deputy and ordered Gutierrez to stop, witnesses said.

“Instead of stopping, Gutierrez continued running and turned and fired on the deputy,” Ellison wrote.

Ogawa ducked behind his car and fired one shot at Gutierrez, hitting him

in the abdomen.

Gutierrez was pronounced dead later that evening at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard.

The several hundred dollars that Gutierrez had taken in the robbery was found on and near his body, Ellison wrote.