3 Die in Spate of Weekend Violence in West County : Crime: Two men are shot and killed, another is stabbed to death over a span of 18 hours.

Two men were shot and killed and another was fatally stabbed during an 18-hour period this weekend in western Ventura County, authorities said Saturday.

The first killing occurred east of Santa Paula about 9:35 p.m. Friday when a gunman shot ranch foreman Rosario de la Cruz, 47, four times in the chest while De la Cruz was standing on the porch of his house. Police have arrested a transient who formerly worked on the ranch, Sheriff’s Lt. Gary Cook said.

About 2 1/2 hours later, Jasper Calhoun, 19, of Columbus, Ohio, was stabbed at a party in Ojai. Friends of Calhoun, a former Ojai resident, found him lying in the driveway. Police are continuing to investigate Ojai’s first slaying since 1991.

And on Saturday afternoon, police responding to a call near the Ventura County Fairgrounds found a male in his 20s who had been fatally shot in the face. A suspect was arrested a short time later in Oxnard, police said.

“In 28 years of observing this sort of thing in the county, it seems that . . . things seem to run in spells,” said Ventura County Sheriff’s Lt. Gary Markley. “It is unusual, but that’s not to say we haven’t had it happen before.”

Deputy Coroner Dale Zentis agreed: “For Ventura County, three homicides in a span of less than 24 hours is unusual because we only get about 30 a year here.”

The three deaths bring to 10 the number of slaying in Ventura County this year. There were 32 in 1992, down from 48 committed in 1991.

In the De la Cruz shooting, which occurred in the 100 block of Willard Road, police arrested Jose Luis Gonzalez, 23, about 3 a.m. Saturday as he slept in a truck near Santa Paula Airport, Cook said. He is being held in lieu of $250,000 bail at Ventura County Jail. He is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday.

Police had no one in custody Saturday evening in the Ojai stabbing.

Friends of Calhoun, who was visiting the area with his father, discovered he had been stabbed after finding him lying in the driveway behind a house on Blanche Street as a party was breaking up.

They gave him first aid, but he was dead on arrival at Ojai Valley Hospital, a nursing supervisor said.

In the Ventura shooting, which occurred on Garden Street near Thompson Boulevard, police had not identified the victim by late Saturday.

However, Melvin Lamont Braddock, 24, of Pasadena was arrested shortly after the 1:30 p.m. shooting after neighbors described his car to police.

Braddock was arrested on the Ventura Freeway near the Vineyard exit after a brief chase, authorities said. Police had no motive in the shooting. Braddock is being held in lieu of $250,000 bail at Ventura County Jail.

Autopsies are scheduled today for Calhoun and the Ventura victim.