2 Youths, Mother Injured in Port Hueneme Drive-By

A drive-by shooting aimed at rival gang members left three Port Hueneme residents with minor injuries and led to the arrest of an Oxnard man early Saturday, Port Hueneme police said.

And on Friday night in Oxnard, six or seven gang members attacked a neighborhood watch group and injured a 2-month-old child by throwing a skateboard through a window, police said.

In addition, a Friday night shooting in Moorpark that authorities originally thought was a drive-by turned out to have been the result of an argument between strangers in a parking lot, sheriff’s deputies said. They said they were unsure if it was gang-related.

In the Port Hueneme incident, police responded just after 1 a.m. Saturday to a report of a drive-by shooting in the 500 block of East Joyce Drive. The shotgun blast injured two youths and their mother, who were treated for minor wounds, police said.

Port Hueneme police spotted a car they thought belonged to the shooters in front of a house nearby, in the 600 block of East Scott Street.

After surrounding the house, they called in the Oxnard police SWAT unit. After a standoff that lasted more than three hours, police persuaded seven suspects to leave the house and surrender.

Danny Romero, 18, of Oxnard, was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, said Detective Christopher Graham. The other occupants of the house were released.

“It was rival gang members that he shot at,” Graham said.

In Oxnard, a neighborhood watch coordinator said six or seven gang members threw a beer can at his car and threatened him with a two-by-four Friday night in south Oxnard. “They were out to cause trouble,” coordinator Roy Simmons said. “They probably should have been stopped a little bit sooner.”

The same gang was also suspected of throwing a skateboard through a window Friday night, slightly injuring a 2-month-old child inside a house, Oxnard Police Cmdr. Jamie Skeeters said.

In Moorpark, sheriff’s deputies were looking Saturday for a white or gray four-door compact car, possibly a Volkswagen Rabbit, with a broken front windshield and a missing passenger-side window. Authorities said the car’s driver shot Andy Meza, 17, once in the chest with a handgun after an argument in the parking lot of the Carniceria Rodriguez store at 380 Moorpark Ave.

Meza was in serious but stable condition Saturday at Simi Valley Hospital, authorities said.