Thousands of Officers Honor Slain Detective

More than 3,200 law enforcement officers from Ventura County and communities throughout the state converged on Camarillo on Tuesday morning to pay last respects to a slain comrade, veteran Oxnard Police Detective James E. O’Brien.

Draping black ribbons across their badges to show sympathy and solidarity, the uniformed officers joined O’Brien’s family and hundreds of grieving friends who remembered him as a caring, dedicated, gung-ho detective.

“We are not here today to celebrate this man’s death; we are here to celebrate this man’s life,” said Father Liam Kidney, the pastor at O’Brien’s church, Padre Serra Parish in Camarillo.

“I know this much: If they need cops in heaven, they got a good one in Jim O’Brien.”

O’Brien died last Thursday while trying to apprehend a man who had sprayed an Oxnard unemployment office with gunfire, killing three and wounding four.

The gunman, jobless computer engineer Alan Winterbourne, was later shot and killed by police.

After the 90-minute Mass--broadcast on speakers and television sets to a packed parking lot at St. Mary Magdalen Church in Camarillo--about 1,200 cars streamed through closed-off streets in a miles-long procession to Santa Clara Cemetery in Oxnard.

Hundreds of squad cars and motorcycles, some with sirens wailing, drove slowly at the head of the procession, past solemn residents who clustered at every intersection--some waving, others simply watching in silence.

At the graveside ceremony, Kidney blessed two crosses with holy water and presented them to O’Brien’s children.

Kathryn, 9, and Sean, 7, sat quietly in the front row, clutching the hands of their mother, Leslie O’Brien.

A 21-gun salute honored O’Brien after the short ceremony, and two helicopters flew the “Missing Man” formation overhead.

Meanwhile, separate funeral services elsewhere in the county were held for the other victims of Winterbourne’s deadly rampage.

The services for Anna F. Velasco, Phillip Villegas and Richard Bateman each drew hundreds of grieving friends and family.

Velasco and Villegas both worked for the state Employment Development Department, where they were known as cheerful, diligent employees always eager to help others.

Bateman was shot while helping a developmentally disabled client test clerical skills in a real-life setting, the Oxnard unemployment office.

“We all knew Dick as a gentle, responsible man, the type often described as salt of the earth,” said Bateman’s neighbor, Ken Schmidt. “Our neighborhood is emptier and poorer without him.”

In all four of Tuesday’s funerals, mourners reminisced about the victims’ lives, rather than lingering on their violent deaths.

Many of the 4,500 people attending O’Brien’s service had a story to tell about the nine-year veteran of the Oxnard Police Department, who devoted much of his time to combatting local gangs and wiping out graffiti.

Dozens of teen-agers stood shyly in the church parking lot to honor a cop who knew them all by name.

His karate students and sparring partners came, too, remembering O’Brien as a mentor who taught them never to quit, in sport or in life.

“He was someone really special, someone who shouldn’t have died,” said Tara Mahoney, 18.

Most onlookers stared in awe and respect at the huge crowd of uniformed officers--sheriff’s deputies in brown and khaki, police officers in starched blue, even a search and rescue crew member in a fluorescent orange shirt.

Los Angeles Police Department Chief Willie L. Williams came, as did officers from the FBI and U.S. Coast Guard.

From Fresno to San Diego, from Hermosa Beach to Yucca Valley, dozens of city police departments sent representatives to join the somber crowd.

“Any time a police officer is killed, you feel it, whether he’s in your department or not,” Williams said. “This is where a chief belongs.”

Lt. Kenny Mollohan of the Seal Beach Police Department added: “This could happen to any officer anywhere, so we all feel for that department. Every time something like this happens, we review what went on so it never happens again.”

Standing nearby, Officer Bob Heer of Los Alamitos added sadly, “We never get it right, though.”

To that, Mollohan responded: “We should never stop trying.”

While attendance at the other three funerals could not match O’Brien’s overflow crowd, the grief at each was just as intense.

At Velasco’s bilingual mass, more than 400 friends and family listened as Father Norman Supancheck urged them to view her life as a model.

“I never saw her hurt anyone, never heard her say anything bad about anyone,” Supancheck said, recalling Velasco’s constant efforts to help the poor and downtrodden. “I would hope that would be our goal in life, too.”

Friends of Villegas remembered him as a devoted community activist who always put others ahead of himself.

“He liked people and people liked him,” said Will Berg, a friend of Villegas for more than 30 years. “He was magic for this community. We all die a little bit when someone like Phillip dies.”

Similar sentiment filled the eulogies at Bateman’s funeral, where more than two dozen of his colleagues from the Assn. for Retarded Citizens joined about 200 friends and family members.

“He gave of himself so others could succeed,” said the association’s director, Fred Robinson. “He made a difference in many lives.”

Times staff writers Daryl Kelley, Carlos V. Lozano, Sara Catania, Jeff Meyers, Joanna M. Miller and Fred Alvarez contributed to this report. Times correspondents Maia Davis and Julie Fields also contributed.

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