Man Killed in Possible Gang Argument

A 20-year-old Ventura man was shot and killed in what appeared to be a gang-related argument at the Motel 6 on Harbor Boulevard early Thursday morning, police said.

Mark Walter Schultz confronted another man about 2:30 a.m. in front of Room 170 at the motel and was shot in the confrontation, said Det. Gary McCaskill of the Ventura Police Department.

Schultz then staggered to the McDonald’s next door, where he collapsed, McCaskill said.

He was unconscious by the time paramedics arrived and died about an hour later at Ventura County Medical Center, said a spokesman for the county medical examiner.

This is the fourth homicide in the city of Ventura this year and the first since 65-year-old Mildred Wilson was shot and killed July 20 during a carjacking at Poinsettia shopping center.

Police did not disclose much about the confrontation that led to Schultz’s death, except to say that it involved two rival gangs. The investigation is continuing, and officers had not made an arrest as of late Thursday.

“I can say it wasn’t anything significant,” McCaskill said about the argument leading up to the shooting. “Nothing you would think someone would get shot over.”

Schultz’s mother, Claudia, said her son, who was on parole with the California Youth Authority, had recently focused his life on providing for his 13-month-old son, Cody, and his 19-year-old girlfriend, Cazma Mallonee.

“He loved his boy so much,” Claudia Schultz said, holding a picture of her son taken on the day Cody was born.

Schultz’s father, Walter Schultz of Bakersfield, said he thought the argument that prompted the shooting was over money.

But friends--some of whom were at the scene--told conflicting stories, saying the argument may have been over money or simply over a menacing look.

Roy Miller, a lifelong friend who was at the motel with Schultz, said they had gone there with a few friends ready for a fight.

“But we didn’t go over there with guns or anything,” he said. “We were going to get down with bare knuckles.”

But when Schultz confronted one of the assailants at the motel, the man immediately pulled out a small gun and fired at Schultz’s chest, Miller said.

The friends scattered, and Schultz staggered through the motel parking lot and then collapsed on the lawn in front of the fast-food restaurant next door.