Deputy Sheriff Near Ojai Is Shot to Death

A Ventura County sheriff’s deputy was shot to death and another man wounded Wednesday evening in an otherwise quiet, shady Ojai Valley neighborhood as the officer tried to quell a domestic quarrel.

Deputy Peter Aguirre, 26, had gone to a house on North Encinal Avenue in Meiners Oaks on a report that a man was holding a woman hostage.

As deputies bracketed the house with their patrol cars, a woman ran out. Officials said Aguirre went inside, where he was shot by a man identified as Michael Raymond Johnson, 48.

Aguirre’s partner wounded the alleged gunman with a shotgun blast, Ventura County Sheriff Larry Carpenter said.

Aguirre, who lived in Saticoy with his wife and 3-year-old daughter, was taken by helicopter to Ventura County Medical Center in Ventura. He was pronounced dead at the hospital. Officials said he had been shot in the upper body and head.

Johnson also was taken to Ventura County Medical Center, where he was in stable condition with a single gunshot wound in the chest.

Top sheriff’s officials and prosecutors rushed to the scene as word of the shooting spread. A somber Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury spent more than an hour talking with officials.

Sheriff Carpenter said he knew Aguirre personally.

Aguirre had been with the department for two years and on patrol for about 10 months.

“This was a really, really good kid,” Carpenter said.

Aguirre is the fourth Ventura County law enforcement officer in less than three years to lose his life in the line of duty.

Oxnard Police Officer James R. Jensen Jr., 30, was accidentally shot to death March 13 by a fellow officer, Sgt. Dan Christian, during a botched drug raid. Jensen’s widow this week notified Oxnard city officials that she intends to sue over the shooting. Her lawyer says the department and Christian were at fault.

In 1995, Simi Valley Police Officer Michael F. Clark, 28, was killed when he and a partner were investigating a report of a man threatening suicide. Daniel Allen Tuffree is now being tried for murder in Clark’s death. A jury is expected to begin hearing testimony in that case next week.

James E. O’Brien, 35, was killed in 1993 when the Oxnard police officer was exchanging shots with a deranged gunman who had killed three people and wounded four others at an unemployment office. The gunman was killed a short time later by another police officer.

Aguirre is the first Ventura County deputy to lose his life in the line of duty since 1975, when Sgt. Thomas K. Collins died in a helicopter crash.

The last Ventura County sheriff’s deputy to die in a shooting was Don Hainey in 1970, Carpenter said.

Times staff writers Mack Reed and Fred Alvarez contributed to this story.