Threats by Intruder Before Killing Are Disclosed

A man fatally shot in a downtown Ventura apartment house had broken into the building hours before and threatened a woman living there, investigators said Tuesday.

The man, whose identity remained a mystery, died of a single bullet wound to the chest about 7 p.m. Monday.

Ventura police said Dean Anthony Soto, 29, the boyfriend of one of three women living in the apartment, fired the shot from a 9mm semiautomatic pistol during a struggle with the unidentified man.

Officers who arrived within minutes found the man dead with a switchblade knife in one hand.

Police Lt. Brad Talbot said the case will be reviewed by the district attorney’s office to determine whether Soto fired the shot in self-defense. Soto, who also lives in Ventura, could not be reached for comment.

“It’s a homicide,” Talbot said. “Whether it’s a murder or some other classification of death, that’s a legal decision.”

But before detectives take the case to the district attorney’s office, they hope to determine the dead man’s identity, Talbot said.

After the shooting, police found no identification on the man and a computer check of everyone arrested and convicted of crimes in California failed to turn up fingerprints that matched the victim’s.

Authorities are now hoping someone will notice his absence and come forward. The death was the 20th homicide in Ventura County this year and the fifth in the city of Ventura.

Coroner’s officials described the victim as a white man in his late teens or early 20s with brown eyes and brown hair shaved in back. He was 140 pounds and 5 foot, 9 inches. He had a surgical scar below his left knee, his ears were pierced, and on one finger was a silver ring with the outline of an Indian.

“Our best hope is that someone will read about it in the paper and realize they’ve seen him around,” Deputy Coroner Jim Wingate said.

Part of the mystery surrounding the shooting stems from the man’s behavior in the hours before his death.

According to a 21-year-old woman who lives in the Victorian-style apartment house, the man first came there Sunday night for a barbecue and party.

During the party, the woman said she noticed him holding a piece of paper with her name and the names of her roommates written on it. In his other hand, he was flicking a switchblade open and shut, she said.

“I tried to figure out what was going on in his mind,” she said. “I thought maybe this guy was just lonely.”

When the woman and her roommates got ready to go dancing around midnight, the man was reluctant to leave.

Police Sgt. Bob Anderson said the man was brought to the party by an acquaintance of the women. Detectives are now trying to find the acquaintance to question him.

Monday morning, the man called the apartment from the lobby of a motel directly behind the building and told the woman he had spent the night there, she said.

Later, he came to the apartment several times and the woman let him in. But the woman said she did not become scared until the man crawled through her kitchen window around 4 p.m. and confronted her alone in the house.

When she came out of her bedroom and spotted him, he began making sexual threats and touched her several times, she said.

“He said, ‘I know you want it, and I know you want me to rape you,’ ” said the woman, who works at her mother’s clothing shop in downtown Ventura.

Eventually, the woman said she persuaded the man to leave by acting as if she did not believe his threats.

“I was strong and I didn’t show vulnerability and I think that’s what changed his mind,” she said.

The shooting occurred about two hours later when the man returned after hitching a ride to the house with a 20-year-old man he had met that day.

The 21-year-old woman said she locked herself in a bedroom while her two roommates and Soto talked with him. The woman said she did not know Soto had a gun with him.

“I heard the gun go off and I felt like it was really bad,” she said. “I felt like it was the end.”