Man, 14-Year-Old Boy Wounded in Oxnard Shooting

Adrian Reyes, 20, spent Wednesday walking around La Colonia, talking with neighbors and wondering why he was shot once in each hand and in the buttocks the night before.

He and a 14-year-old friend were attacked by two alleged gang members after making a phone call at the corner store.

Reyes’ friend was shot in the chin and remains in fair but stable condition at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard. The boy has not been identified because of his age. Reyes was hit three times and has two bandaged hands and a scarred buttocks.

Reyes, an Oxnard High School dropout, said he and his friend had just finished using a pay phone outside Ben’s Market on Cooper Road about 9:15 p.m. Tuesday when two gang members popped out of an alley, shouted gang slogans and opened fire.

“All I remember is seeing the guns firing,” he said Wednesday, while standing on the porch of his mother’s house on Roosevelt Avenue, just two blocks from the incident. “We ran and they hit us.”

Reyes, it would appear, made a fateful mistake that night. In an era when wearing the wrong color or baseball cap can mean death, Reyes wore a black hooded sweatshirt and a black Oakland Raiders cap.

“I guess I shouldn’t have worn black,” he said. “They must have thought I was a gang member.”

Is he angry? Not really, he said. “I guess I shouldn’t have worn black,” he repeated.

His mother, Jessica Duran, has other ideas.

“This is silly, crazy,” she said. “They shoot people for anything these days. This violence has to stop. But how?”

Then she answered her own question.

“I tell Adrian to wear only gray, but the hat was a gift.”

She said she has lived in La Colonia all her life and has always felt safe there. But Tuesday night’s bloody events scared her.

“I was doing laundry when I heard Adrian call my name from outside,” Duran said. “His voice was all shaky. I knew something was wrong.”

When she ran to the door, her suspicions were proven correct.

“Adrian and [the juvenile] were all bloody,” she said. “The little boy seemed in shock. His chin was burst open like an old piece of leather.”

Moments later, the ambulance arrived.

Duran insists her son and his friend are not gang members and were not looking for trouble Tuesday. They had spent the day together working around her house, preparing the front yard for a new lawn, she said. Then they went to call the 14-year-old’s girlfriend from the pay phone.

“I like to keep them busy and earning a little spending money,” she said.

Police say they aren’t sure whether the pair are gang members.

Police also say they can’t pinpoint the crime scene because they can’t find any shell casings, a trail of blood or known witnesses. They have no suspects and anyone with information is urged to call the Oxnard gang hotline at 339-4053.

Duran and her neighbors say they are fed up with the violence.

“I think it’s pretty stupid,” said 17-year-old Miguel Morales, a junior at Oxnard High School. “People have no respect for life anymore. No respect, period. You don’t know when somebody’s going to try and shoot you. It could happen any time.”

Morales’ classmate, DeAnna Nunez, 16, said she mainly fears for her male friends.

“I wear whatever color I want to,” Nunez said. “But when I go on dates, the guys are always hassling each other and getting into fights.”

Reyes listened to his neighbors talk in his yard. At one point, he showed them his less visible and fleshier wound.

He’s still not sure why he was shot.

“I guess I shouldn’t have worn black,” he said yet again.