Simi Man, 27, Faces Murder Charge in Neighbor’s Death

While detectives continued to interview witnesses Friday, prosecutors prepared to file a murder complaint against a 27-year-old Simi Valley man accused of shooting his neighbor to death after a long-standing and bitter feud.

Christopher Charles Harbridge is scheduled to be arraigned Monday at 1:30 p.m. and charged with shooting 30-year-old Ronald Tracy Rowe once in the chest with a .357 magnum handgun. The shooting took place Thursday morning as Rowe was leaving his house for work.

The felony complaint, finished late Friday by Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Jim Ellison, accuses Harbridge of one count of murder with the additional special circumstance of using a firearm. The complaint is expected to be filed Monday morning, officials said.

Harbridge, a former news editor for the Moorpark College newspaper, remains in the Ventura County Jail.

Neighbors and police said that Rowe and Harbridge had a feud that spanned more than a year.

Police had been called to the neighborhood to settle disputes between the two men at least four times, said Sgt. Bob Gardener of the Simi Valley Police Department.

“They were all nonevents,” Gardener said. “Arguments over nothing in which no arrests were made.”

On Thanksgiving Day, officers arrived to break up an argument between the two concerning a light over the Rowe family garage that Harbridge apparently felt was shining too brightly onto his property.

“We believe that the light incident may have been an element in the shooting but not the only reason for it,” Gardener said.

Friends of Rowe who lived in the neighborhood said that it was Harbridge who had been baiting Rowe and trying to provoke him over the last year.

“I don’t know what started it,” said one woman who asked not to be identified. “All I know is that Ron told me and my husband that he thought this could only end with one of them dead.”

She said it was Harbridge who had been provoking Rowe.

“Ron was clearly the victim here,” she said, adding that Rowe had complained to police on several occasions but that little was done. “It just seems that something could have been done earlier that could have prevented this.”

Other neighbors on the quiet street lined with single family homes and a few in-home day care centers said they were shocked by the shooting.

“I just can’t believe that someone could kill another person over a neighborhood feud,” said Billie Mae Niedert, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1961.