‘A Real Hero’

Five days after gunfire ended his life, family, friends and fellow officers wept Monday as Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputy Peter John Aguirre Jr. was laid to rest in the town where he was born.

His was the second Southern California police funeral in a week, after slain CHP Officer Don J. Burt’s on Friday, and the third in Ventura County in a year.

“I’ve been to too many of these,” Ontario Police Det. Mike Kelley said grimly Monday, mounting his motorcycle to join a funeral cortege of nearly 1,000 officers who escorted Aguirre’s casket to its grave. “It’s always one too many.”

Aguirre died at work, ripped from the ranks of deputies who respected Slain Sheriff’s Deputy Peter John Aguirre Jr. is laid to rest in his hometown. His is the third police funeral in the county in a year.

him, from the arms of a community that loved him as only a small town could.

As Aguirre tried to calm a marital spat in Ojai Wednesday night, a man allegedly shot him once in the shoulder and twice in the head. Michael Raymond Johnson now waits in Ventura County Jail facing a murder charge that could carry the death penalty.

Sheriff Larry Carpenter said in his eulogy Monday that the rookie deputy grew up in Santa Paula, and fell wearing a gilt deputy’s badge with a snapshot of his wife and young daughter taped to the back.

“He was murdered because he was a deputy sheriff,” Carpenter said, “and he was simply doing his job.”

Solemnly, Carpenter gripped the lectern at Sacred Heart Church in Ventura, which was packed with Aguirre’s extended family and childhood friends from Santa Paula and nearly his entire sheriff’s academy class.

Carpenter read briefly from an essay Aguirre wrote barely two years ago after he put aside early aspirations to be a teacher and applied for work as a deputy:

“Today’s officer must use all of his intellect, senses and fair judgment,” Carpenter read. “Today’s officer needs all the cooperation the community can give . . . and the community must respect our officers if they are expected to respect the law.”

Carpenter remembered Aguirre as a 26-year-old former religious studies student who was “confident without being abrasive . . . sensitive without being soft.”

“Peter was a real hero,” Carpenter concluded. “He was a lawman.”

Close friends choked back tears at the lectern as they remembered growing up in tight-knit Santa Paula--skateboarding, plowing through grade school and eyeing girls--with “Petey.” And they talked about his dedication to police work.

“Petey loved his job so much, despite the dangers it possessed,” Gene Martinez, Aguirre’s cousin, told the congregation. “He always told me how exciting it was.”

Then the funeral procession bore Aguirre’s body to its grave at Santa Paula Cemetery.

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Three white doves perched on power lines overhead. Family members said they had been roosting there for several days, and were the reason that Aguirre’s wife chose the site for Aguirre’s grave in the shadow of an avocado grove.

As a sea of tan-clad deputies snapped to attention, the mournful wail of bagpipes drifted through the air. Pallbearers lifted the coffin from the hearse and bore it to the grave site as friends and family choked back sobs and wiped away tears.

Father Daniel O’Sullivan delivered a prayer. Then he plucked three crucifixes off the casket, blessed them with holy water and handed one to Aguirre’s widow, one to his mother and one to his child.

Marie Aguirre brought the crucifix to her lips in her son’s memory and delivered a gentle kiss.

The sheriff’s honor guard surrounded the casket and neatly folded the American flag that lay the cherrywood coffin as a lone bugler blew “Taps.”

Then, Enedina Aguirre--the grade-school sweetheart who became Aguirre’s wife of four years and then his widow--stoically accepted the crisply folded flag from Sheriff Carpenter.

But when Aguirre’s 3-year-old daughter Gabriela was asked to place flowers atop it, she balked and cried, “No!”

Aguirre’s friends and family flinched at the sharp crack of a 21-gun salute, the harsh military farewell for the native son they knew from his days as a clerk at his grandfather’s grocery store.

For some, the massive show of respect--the bagpipes, the riderless horse, the fly-by of the Ventura County sheriff’s helicopter squad--did little to diminish the pain. Aguirre was the fourth police officer slain in Ventura County since 1993: Oxnard Officer James E. O’Brien was killed by a gunman in December 1993. Simi Valley Officer Michael F. Clark died last August when he went to calm a suicidal man. And Oxnard Officer James R. Jensen Jr. was accidentally killed by a colleague in March during a drug raid.

“It’s terrible that these things happen, and somehow we have to find a way to live through it,” said Donald Ayala, a distant cousin of Aguirre’s. “Just about every day, you hear about police officers getting killed. You don’t know what is going to happen from one day to the next.”

But a mariachi band filled the graveyard with music as the service ended and a long line of mourners offered their condolences to the family and filed past the casket.

Enedina Aguirre laid a hand on the coffin, then lifted her daughter to deliver a light kiss to the wood.

Aguirre’s mother, Marie, and father, Peter, followed, running their hands along the casket’s sleek finish before being helped away.

Three family members stayed behind, watching cemetery workers lower the box into the earth and cover the hole with dirt.

Even after the deputies and officer were dismissed, they milled around exchanging hugs and clutching each other for support.

A group of deputies who worked with Aguirre huddled around the casket, rapping it with their knuckles as if to let their good friend know that they had not left his side.

And some onlookers said they felt pride seeing Aguirre escorted to his rest by dozens of police cruisers and more than 100 motorcycles bearing names of police departments from as far away as San Jose and Sonoma County.

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The ranks of police included top brass such as Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block and Oxnard Police Chief Harold Hurtt, and officers from every police honor guard in the county.

Retired Oxnard Police Cmdr. Jamie Skeeters, who has a ranch in Ojai and often socializes with the local deputies, said Aguirre is the ninth law enforcement officer that he has known to die in the line of duty.

“There’s been far too many of these funerals,” Skeeters said, dressed in a black suit and tie with black electric tape across his golden retired officer’s badge.

Ventura Police Lt. Carl Handy, who was organizing security for the funeral, said the turnout was important for the family and Aguirre’s fellow deputies.

“When it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter what color the uniform, we’re all brothers,” Handy said.

Kelley, the Ontario detective, summed up the show of support by officers from the far-flung agencies.

“It’s always important to show up if you can,” said Kelley, who had ridden in the motorcade for CHP Patrolman Burt last week. “When they see us show up en masse, I think it makes them feel more secure. It gives them confidence again.”

Added Kelley: “I don’t know this guy, I didn’t know that CHP officer either, but when you start to hear all the things that they’ve done, when you hear about their lives and careers, you say to yourself, ‘Man that could have been me,’ ” he said. “That could have been any of us.”

Staff writers Fred Alvarez and Lorenza Munoz contributed to this report.