VENTURA : Fatal Stabbing Leads to 15-Year Sentence

A 20-year-old Ventura man who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the stabbing death of a Lompoc teen-ager during a 1992 street festival in Santa Barbara was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years in state prison.

But Gregory Dominguez, who admitted his part in the killing of 16-year-old Robert Mitchum, could be out of prison within seven years, said defense attorney Douglas R. Hayes.

Dominguez had been indicted for murder, but pleaded guilty last month to the lesser manslaughter charge.

“It was a compromise,” Hayes said of the plea. “It was based on my knowledge that the Department of Corrections is keeping people on second-degree murder for 18 years.”

Dominguez received 11 years for the voluntary manslaughter charge, plus three years for admitting that he was involved in a gang and another year for using a deadly weapon, Hayes said.

“If (Dominguez) does his work time and behaves himself in prison, he will be out in six years and eight months,” the attorney said.

Dominguez and four other alleged Ventura Avenue gangsters were arrested after Mitchum was stabbed to death in a fight that broke out during Santa Barbara’s Fiesta Days street fair last August.

Three of the defendants already have been sentenced to various terms in state prison or the California Youth Authority for the killing. Another man, Ricardo Cervantes, is scheduled for sentencing in the case on Sept. 30.