Argument Ends in Laborer’s Death

A handshake wasn’t enough to settle an argument in South Oxnard that ended early Monday morning with an 18-year-old laborer dead and two of his neighbors on the run.

Noe Guzman Romero was shot once in the chest with a handgun about 2:30 a.m. soon after trying to settle the argument with two men who lived across the street from him, said Sgt. Lee Wilcox, an Oxnard Police Department homicide detective.

Witnesses told police that the three along with several other men had been drinking beer outside Guzman’s home in the 5300 block of Cypress Road when they began to yell at each other.

The argument seemed to have quieted down after Guzman shook hands with one of the men, police said.

“They shook hands, started drinking again and a little while later they were arguing again,” Wilcox said. “One of the suspects fired two or three shots into the air and then shot [Guzman].”

Guzman was hit once in the center of the chest and died at the scene. When police arrived, his body was lying in the driveway near the apartment he shared with his brother and several other men, neighbors said.

Police cordoned off the area around Guzman’s home most of the day Monday, interviewing witnesses and collecting evidence.

Authorities found at least three people who witnessed the shooting, Wilcox said.

One of the witnesses talked with police for about an hour Monday, but authorities said they had some difficulty getting cooperation from him and the others.

“They were going over the sequence of events last night,” Wilcox said. “But we had three people who all said they were standing there and then said they really didn’t see a lot.”

Monday afternoon, police served a search warrant on a home across the street from Guzman’s where his suspected killer lived, and slipped through a wrought iron gate to go through the residence.

“That place is packed with guys,” said Manuel Navarro, 47, who lives about a block from where the shooting took place.

Navarro said between 15 and 20 men and women live in the residence. He said he heard shots sometime after 2 a.m. but after quieting his barking dog did not think much of it.

“That happens sometimes around here,” he said with a shrug, while watching crime scene technicians photograph the spot where Guzman died.

Behind the iron fence, where police said the suspects lived, were several cars and two portable toilets. Neighbors said the men and some women crowded into the home to save money on rent, and that most of the people were gardeners from Guerrero, Mexico.

“They sometimes got rowdy with drinking,” said Homer Settro, 35, who lives a few doors down from Guzman’s house.

While police searched the home and an abandoned field nearby for the gun used in the shooting, residents were kept away from the crime scene.

Dozens of neighborhood children crowded on the streets behind crime scene tape to watch the detectives work. A group of half a dozen women whose route to work at a nearby plant nursery was blocked by the investigation waited for a chance to get through. And people from several blocks away also converged on the scene to watch the police work.

Arturo Camarena, 14, who lives with his family next to Guzman, said he, his brother and his mother were not able to drive their car out.

“My mom couldn’t go to work and my brother couldn’t go to school,” Arturo said.

He said the man suspected of shooting Guzman--whom police described as in his early 20s--had come over to his family’s home in the past because their mail often got mixed up.

“He was a nice man,” Arturo said.