Oxnard Office Shooting Haunts Survivors Nearly 1 Year Later

Those who were wounded physically and emotionally by a gunman’s deadly rampage at an Oxnard jobs office are still struggling with their sorrow a year later.

And those who were told that worker safety would be paramount after the shootings are struggling with their anger.

Karen Villegas is among those still dealing with her sorrow. Her husband, Phillip, was the first person shot and the first killed. She says it seems like yesterday.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t relive it,” she says, her voice heavy with anguish. “I still expect him to come through the door.

“I hear a noise in the house and I think it’s him in another room. I still set a place at the table for him sometimes.”

Pat McConahay, spokeswoman for the union representing the Employment Development Department workers, is among those dealing with her anger.

Not only have state officials broken an early promise to quickly relocate the employees to another office, McConahay says, but now they are considering replacing an armed guard at the Oxnard EDD office with an unarmed guard.

“Are we going to have to see some more bodies on the floors of these offices before some real action takes place?” she asked. “I guess what this tells us is that the bottom line is always money first, instead of lives.”

Nearly a year has passed since the bloodiest shooting spree in Ventura County history left five people dead and four wounded.

On Dec. 2, unemployed computer engineer Alan Winterbourne burst into the state jobs office in Oxnard and gunned down Villegas, co-worker Anna Velasco and Richard Bateman, a rehabilitation counselor with the Assn. for Retarded Citizens visiting the office that day.

He later shot and killed Oxnard Detective James O’Brien before being shot dead in a hail of police gunfire outside another jobs office in Ventura.

The entire episode, from first shot to last, lasted about 13 minutes.

But really, it lives on.

The rampage ripped the fabric of the community, damaging a suburban notion that mass murders only happen in other places and to other people.

It brought to light the issue of workers’ safety and the rising frustrations of those who scour a shrinking job market in search of steady employment.

It made people feel more vulnerable and less safe. It was a horror many could not cope with, let alone begin to understand.

“What happened on Dec. 2 deeply wounded our community,” said Ventura County Supervisor John Flynn, whose district includes Oxnard. “We read and we listen to so much news about shootings and killings today, and sometimes we think they can only happen elsewhere.

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“But this happened in our own community. It got our attention in a hurry.”

Now, with the one-year anniversary days away, those sentiments are again being stirred to the surface.

Last week, Oxnard officials named a softball field after O’Brien. And Friday’s anniversary observances of the Dec. 2 rampage will be filled with a daylong series of events, including a ceremony at a commemorative rose garden, planted to honor the dead, at the Ventura County Government Center.

But many of those closest to the incident are not ready to take part in anniversary memorials. Some have even left town to avoid the crush of public attention that is sure to come Friday.

Wendy Di Rodio, a licensed marriage and family psychotherapist in Ventura, said feelings of fear and anxiety are normal and expected as the anniversary approaches.

“Those feelings do not indicate that people have not grown or made a lot of progress,” said Di Rodio, who was called in by the state to help employees and clients work through the incident. “It shows how important it is that these people have developed positive methods of dealing with this trauma because it has become part of their lives.”

As the day draws near, those who will take part in the public remembrances are bracing for the inevitability of reliving the events of a year ago.

“I’m trying to build myself up. I’m trying to be brave,” said Pat O’Brien, mother of the slain Oxnard police detective. “I know we’ll all make it, but there will be a few tears.”

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Added Villegas: “I wish I could go to sleep and just wake up after it was all over. As it gets closer and closer to the anniversary, it’s just a terrible feeling.”

For employees at Oxnard’s state unemployment office, the first anniversary will be spent where the rampage took place. Despite an early promise to relocate the office, state officials now say the move won’t take place until at least March.

The Oxnard office will move from its current location at 1960 N. C St. to a vacant grocery store at 5th Street and Ventura Road.

In the meantime, security has been beefed up at the current site.

Bullet-resistant glass has been erected across a long wooden counter that had no barrier before. Full walls have replaced waist-high partitions that used to separate clients from employees.

Office doors, including the gate that Winterbourne kicked open when he started shooting, have been replaced and reinforced with steel. An armed guard now stands watch in the lobby.

Long before the shootings, employees had complained about a lack of security at the Oxnard office. Some said they even feared for their lives.

For many of the office workers, the desire to feel safe in the workplace suffered a setback recently when EDD officials proposed replacing the armed guard with an unarmed guard.

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Angered by the proposal, employees fired off a letter to management in Los Angeles.

“We hate to think that the shooting at our office is just old news now that nine months have passed,” read an excerpt of the letter published this month in a union newsletter. “It is both to your benefit and ours to help prevent setbacks, which in this case involves providing us with an armed guard indefinitely, as promised.”

As a result, officials agreed to keep the armed guard in place for now. But EDD spokeswoman Suzanne Schroeder said that could change when the office moves to its new location.

“It will depend on whether or not the situation requires it,” she said. “If it’s determined that the (armed) guard is still needed, then the status will not change.”

Still, leaders of the state workers union that represents the office’s employees are outraged that the proposal remains under consideration.

“We still feel that the state, our employer, is not taking this very seriously,” said McConahay, spokeswoman for the California State Employees Assn. “I think this incident shows that these tragedies can happen anywhere and everywhere, even in suburbia.”

Also at issue is the mental health of the state employees who have had to return to an office where they witnessed their co-workers, their friends, gunned down in cold blood.

“Violence in the workplace happens without warning and removes all sense of control,” said Di Rodio, who is writing a book titled “Workplace Violence: The Trauma and the Healing of EDD 073.”

“Similar to a bank robbery, there is a fear of being shot. However, a holdup man enters with the aim of taking money; here the gunman entered with the aim of taking lives,” Di Rodio said.

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When Winterbourne opened fire Dec. 2, his aim was deadly.

It started at 11:41 a.m., when the 33-year-old unemployed man walked into the jobs office and indiscriminately began spraying it with bullets. Survivors remember the silence. They remember hiding under desks and hearing Winterbourne stalk through the office, hunting for victims.

Irma Lopez, the wife of Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez, remembers making a break for safety only to be cut down just short of the front door. She remembers lying on the ground, wounded and bleeding and unable to move.

And she remembers being dragged to safety by a stranger as the gunman continued to fire at her.

“Looking back now, I can hardly believe that it happened,” said Lopez, who continues to battle bouts of severe sciatic nerve pain from where shotgun pellets ripped into her back.

“I know of course that it happened. I can see my physical scarring. I know that my friends are gone. But still, it’s hard to even come to grips with the idea that somebody tried to kill me.”

Three other employees also were wounded--Darlene Provencio of Oxnard, Catherine Stinson of Port Hueneme and Bonnie Smith of Camarillo. Of the wounded, only Smith has returned to work.

Employees say the carnage could have been much worse. About a dozen of the 35 employees had called in sick that day. More were out of the office for various reasons.

“So much has changed,” said office manager Avelina Villalobos, losing a battle to keep from crying. “We’ve all changed to an extent. None of us will ever be the same again.”

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The shooting occurred less than a month after Phillip and Karen Villegas celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. They met in high school. She was a freshman, he a sophomore with a driver’s license and a ’54 Chevy.

They went to football games and high school dances. He would pick her up after school each day even after he graduated. They were married in the fall, a few months after her graduation.

“We really were a perfect match,” she said. “We just grew together; we did not grow apart. We were lucky. We were very lucky.”

In the past year, Villegas has tried to learn how to get along without her high school sweetheart. Her children--Phillip, 25, and Lisa, 22--have tried to get along without their father.

“There are no words to describe the private hell that we’ve gone through,” she said. “I just feel so cheated. They say it gets easier. I’m waiting.”

So, too, is Pat O’Brien.

Against a steady rain Friday morning, O’Brien tended the grave of her son, the Oxnard policeman gunned down in the line of duty. She was joined by other family members, including her son Tom, who visited his brother’s grave site for the first time.

“I wanted to wait until the headstone was in place,” he explained. The grave marker was installed last week. It is engraved with a police badge with the number 140, O’Brien’s number.

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The marker reads in part: “A cop’s cop.”

“He was a real busy guy. It was almost like he had a schedule to keep,” his mother said. “He left this world in a blaze of glory.”

The cemetery will be filled next week, when Oxnard police hold a memorial on the anniversary of O’Brien’s death. Similar ceremonies will be held for other victims of the massacre.

“It’s just part of the remembering, which is good for everybody,” Tom O’Brien said of the string of memorials planned for next Friday. “It helps with the healing.”

There will be no graveside memorial for Alan Winterbourne. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea off the Santa Barbara coast.