Slain Deputy Is Mourned at Ventura Funeral

Family, friends and fellow officers wept Monday as Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputy Peter John Aguirre Jr. was laid to rest five days after gunfire ended his life.

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 Monday, mounting his motorcycle to join a funeral cortege of nearly 1,000 officers who escorted Aguirre’s casket to his grave. “It’s always one too many.”

Aguirre died on duty, ripped from the ranks of deputies who respected him and from a community that loved him as only a small town could.

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

Sheriff Larry Carpenter said in his eulogy Monday that the rookie deputy grew up in Santa Paula and was felled 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 podium at Sacred Heart Church, which was packed with Aguirre’s extended family and childhood friends from Santa Paula and nearly his entire sheriff’s academy class.

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

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

Close friends choked back tears at the podium as they remembered growing up in tightknit Santa Paula--skateboarding, attending 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.”

After final blessings from Bishop Thomas Curry of Santa Barbara, the funeral procession bore Aguirre’s body to his grave at Santa Paula Cemetery.

Three white doves perched on power lines overhead. Family members said the birds 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.

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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 tears from their eyes.

Father Daniel O’Sullivan delivered a prayer. Then he took 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 on top 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 off his cherrywood coffin from Sheriff Carpenter.

But when Aguirre’s 3-year-old daughter, Gabriela, was asked to place flowers atop the coffin, 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 flyover by Ventura County Sheriff’s Department helicopters--did little to diminish the pain.

“Just about every day, you hear about police officers getting killed,” said Donald Ayala, a distant cousin of Aguirre. “You don’t know what is going to happen from one day to the next.”

Others felt pride seeing the funeral procession crawl past with dozens of cruisers and more than 100 motorcycles, from police agencies as far away as San Jose and Sonoma County.

Ontario Det. Kelley summed up the show of support: “It’s always important to show up if you can. . . . When [family members] see us show up en masse, I think it makes them feel more secure. It gives them confidence again.”

Times staff writers Fred Alvarez and Lorenza Munoz and correspondent Scott Hadly contributed to this report.