Boy Caught in Middle of Oxnard Pawnshops’ Feud : 13-Year-Old Sued, Investigated After Reporting Tire-Slashing

Two years ago, 11-year-old Jesus Garcia told police that he saw a man with a Rottweiler slash a tire in a parking lot along Oxnard Boulevard, then bolt away down an alley.

The boy says he reported the incident because he thought that it was the right thing to do. Now he wishes that he’d just kept quiet.

That’s because Jesus and his mother, Estella Garcia, are being sued by the man police arrested and have found themselves in the middle of a long-running feud between two Oxnard Boulevard pawnshops.

“When you try to teach your kids to be good citizens, this is what happens. You get penalized,” said Estella Garcia, 38, who works for Ventura County processing welfare applications.

“I don’t have any money. How am I going to defend myself?” she asked. “That’s why I worry, even though I know what we’re saying is true.”

The truck whose tire was slashed belonged to an employee of Get-Mor Loan & Jewelry. Based on Jesus’ identification, Robert Wademan--owner of the neighboring Saul’s Loan & Jewelry--was charged with misdemeanor vandalism in September, 1992. But prosecutors dropped the charge a year later, saying they doubted that they could get a conviction.

The two businesses have a long history of acrimonious relations.

In 1991, Get-Mor’s owners, Steven and Morris Funk, sued Wademan, alleging unfair business tactics. They accused him and his employees of making anti-Semitic slurs, blaring loud Christmas music and positioning a robot to intimidate customers.

Wademan countersued, and a Ventura County Superior Court judge issued a restraining order against both businesses, telling them to leave each other alone.

Now, a police official familiar with the tension between the businesses wonders whether Wademan’s suit against the Garcias is not rooted in the rivalry.

“My opinion is that they (filed suit) to put pressure on the Garcias to force them to change their story . . . and that would allow Wademan to sue Get-Mor Loan,” said Oxnard Police Detective Len Newcomb, who investigated the tire-slashing.

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Said Steven Funk, who is a reserve Oxnard police officer: “In my opinion, they’re trying to say the kid was put up to it by us.”

But Wademan’s attorney, Peter Goldenring, denies any hidden motives.

“That’s not true,” he said. “The lawsuit is as we have pled it. No more, no less. It stands on its own.”

The suit, filed Dec. 30 in Ventura County Superior Court, seeks more than $250,000 in damages from the Garcias. It accuses Jesus Garcia of lying to police and of conspiring to damage Wademan’s business. And it accuses Estella Garcia of negligent supervision of a child for allowing her son to name Wademan as the tire-slasher.

Goldenring would not say with whom he believes the boy conspired, or what the boy’s motive was.

“All we know is that this boy gave false testimony to the police and to the district attorney’s office,” Goldenring said. “That’s just not OK in our society. Otherwise, we’d all have to run around defending ourselves against false charges.”

No hearing has been scheduled on the suit. Estella Garcia said she expects to file a response today.

Although they dropped the vandalism case against Wademan, prosecutors said they don’t think that Jesus was lying. Part of the problem was that shortly after the slashing, Steve Funk showed Jesus a videotape of Wademan, before the boy picked him out in a police photo lineup. Had Wademan gone to trial, his attorney could have argued that the photo lineup was tainted.

“I don’t question the boy’s credibility,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Simon, who handled the case. “I just don’t believe we could have proved beyond a reasonable doubt” that Wademan was guilty.

Simon added that lawsuits like Wademan’s make witnesses to crimes reluctant to come forward.

“It seems to me the kid was just a witness, trying to do his best to remember things,” he said.

Jesus, who is now 13 and lives in Port Hueneme, said he does not remember seeing Funk’s videotape. But he is steadfast in his account of the tire-slashing, which occurred the afternoon of April 27, 1992.

He said he was with his mother on the way to a jewelry store near the pawnshops when a man walking through the parking lot with a Rottweiler caught his eye.

Interested in the dog, Jesus continued watching as the man suddenly ducked between a red pickup truck and a van. Then he heard a loud pop, like a gunshot. And he saw the man running, carrying what looked like a knife, into an alleyway.

Inside the jewelry store, the Garcias asked who owned the truck. When they returned to their van, they saw two men loading a TV into the disabled truck and shaking their heads. One of them was Get-Mor manager Randy Wiggins, who owned the truck. The Garcias told them what Jesus had seen and police were called.

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The Garcias said they had never before met Wiggins, the Funks or others connected with either pawnshop.

In the past 21 months, the Garcias have made numerous court appearances, and Jesus has been questioned twice by a private investigator working for Wademan’s attorney, including once at the Port Hueneme Boys Club where he goes after school.

Jesus said he never expected that reporting the tire-slashing to police would lead to such a hassle. “I thought I was just going to tell them and that was it. But after all this . . . I won’t say nothing” if he should witness another crime.

But he’s sticking to his story.

“They think just because I’m a kid I can’t say the truth. But I’m going to stand by my word,” he said.