VENTURA : Boy, Woman Held at Gunpoint; 1 Arrested

A 26-year-old Port Hueneme man enraged over a breakup with his girlfriend was arrested early Tuesday after he held a Ventura woman and her 15-year-old neighbor at gunpoint for more than half an hour during a five-hour ordeal that brought out the Ventura SWAT team, authorities said.

Micheal Allen Berry was being held at Ventura County Jail on $10,000 bail Tuesday. The woman held hostage, Kellie Rangel, 24, and the teen-age boy escaped unharmed, police said. Berry’s former girlfriend, Judy Dixson, 39, hid in the bathroom and was also unharmed.

“He was really delusional. . . . I was shaking,” Rangel said Tuesday afternoon, adding that Berry had said he had spoken to and seen the devil in recent days. “He had the gun pressed against my cheek. He was acting almost schizophrenic.”

The escapade began around midnight when Berry entered a house in the 300 block of Garfield Rondo in northeast Ventura and demanded to see Dixson.

Rangel said she persuaded Berry to leave her alone and called police when Berry left her bedroom.

But Berry then grabbed the 15-year-old and held a sawed-off shotgun to the boy’s head and a 15-inch butcher knife to his throat, saying he would kill him unless the boy left the house, Ventura Police Officer Jack Richards said. But he kept the gun and knife on the boy, Richards said, preventing him from walking away.

As police arrived about 12:40 a.m., Berry retreated to another bedroom and locked himself in, pulled out the phone line and boarded up windows.

Soon after, Rangel said, she and the 15-year-old escaped out the front door and, later, Dixson also left the house.

SWAT team members coaxed Berry from the house about 5 a.m., Richards said.

Berry was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, burglary, threatening with a handgun and holding people against their will, Richards said.