String of Slayings Unnerves Safest Urban County in the West

A mother of two is handcuffed and shot in the head execution-style during a takeover robbery at a Thousand Oaks bank.

A popular Buena High School student is stabbed to death by an intruder hiding in his family’s Ventura home, cut down the summer before his senior year.

An elderly man and his daughter are shot dead in front of the woman’s 3-year-old son by a neighbor who said he believed he was killing the devil and a demon.

And a woman and her three young sons fleeing for their lives are gunned down by her distraught husband, shattering the calm of a quiet Simi Valley neighborhood.

All of this in the safest urban county in the West.

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Despite statistics showing that crime rates here are at their lowest levels in nearly three decades, fear has crept into the four corners of Ventura County.

Over the past three months, these crimes have struck a deep chord in communities that have thought themselves essentially safe, even immune, from such violence.

“It’s easier for people to accept the kind of crimes they frequently hear about involving, say, gang members hurting other gang members,” said Chief Deputy Bob Brooks of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

“When it’s someone they feel is completely innocent,” he added, “the crimes are just much more shocking.”

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It is a bitter irony, then, that in Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks--the two safest big cities in the nation--people don’t feel safe, Brooks said.

And in relatively peaceful places like the Upper Ojai and Ventura, where crime rates are lower than they have been since the late 1960s, others worry that random violence could touch them or someone they love.

It is as if these four acts of violence have shaken a sense of security that so many here take for granted, as if they have caused people to wonder, “Could it happen to me or my children?”

“I do hear that from people,” said Brooks, head of the department’s east county division, which patrols Thousand Oaks, Moorpark and the unincorporated portions of the eastern county.

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“The bigger picture is that it is safe here, and we do not have to live in fear,” he said. “[But] even in the safest places we are not immune.”

There have been other crimes, even other killings--16 homicides since Jan. 1.

But the four slayings since the end of April have had a great resonance, tapping a deep well of fear. Such random acts of violence aren’t supposed to happen here, and certainly not to ordinary people going about ordinary business.

“It’s the nature of the crime,” said Ventura Police Lt. Don Arth, who is leading the team of detectives investigating the June 24 stabbing death of 16-year-old James “Jake” Bush.

“The fact that the people can see themselves in similar circumstances--doing everyday things like going to the mall or coming home--gives us all pause to think that it could have been me or someone I know,” Arth said. “It’s those kinds of crimes that shake the community to the very core.”

Jake--a track team co-captain and scholastic standout--was stabbed in the chest, arm and neck after coming home from running errands with his mother, finding that something was not right and stumbling onto a burglar while his mother, Gail Shirley, phoned police in another room.

Shirley did not see her son’s attacker, only hearing Jake gasp that he had been stabbed.

She worked feverishly to save him, but he slipped away a few hours later while in surgery.

Police continue to look for a teenager seen knocking on doors near the home shortly before the killing. They released a composite sketch of the youth, described as a clean-shaven, slim Latino, about 5 feet 6 inches tall, with close-cropped black hair.

On Monday, police announced that they had found what they believe is the murder weapon--a black-handled knife with a 7-inch serrated blade marketed as the Intimidator.

A shocked Ventura City Council put up a $10,000 reward. Ventura County Crime Stoppers added $1,000.

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Ventura restaurant owner John Strobel, whose teenage son was killed four years ago in a similar incident--said Jake’s death affected him deeply.

“It’s not only that it could have been your son or daughter,” Strobel said. “It could have been you.”

In the days after Jake died, those words were often repeated.

One of his close friends, Amanda Snyder, 17, dropped a bouquet at his home and stood in shock for a moment.

“He was in his house with his mom,” she said in disbelief. “I mean this could have been you, it could have been your son. My God, this is Ventura, not Los Angeles. It’s not supposed to happen here.”

But it does happen here. In fact, Jake’s death was the latest in a series of brutal crimes.

Each has received widespread media attention just as the county was topping national rankings as the safest urban one in the West.

In late May, six days after Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks were respectively named the nation’s No. 1 and 2 safest cities with populations of more than 100,000, Simi Valley had one of the worst multiple homicides in county history.

“It is kind of ironic that we had both of these things happen in the same week,” said Simi Valley Police Chief Randy Adams.

The morning of May 27, city resident Ahmad Salman, 44, depressed and drowning in financial problems, grabbed a hunting rifle and chased down his wife and three children at their home as they tried to escape. He then shot himself to death.

Killed, along with Salman, were his wife, Nabela, 38; their twins, Zain and Zaid, 5; and their son Yezen, 3.

The carnage was so devastating that even veteran police officers and paramedics were given counseling.

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The multiple killing “just serves as a reminder . . . that even in the safest city in the nation we are not immune to crime,” Adams added. “We cannot say it will never happen here, but we are proud to say that it rarely does.”

It also rarely happens in the placid, rural community of the Upper Ojai.

But less than a week earlier, Miguel “Mike” Hugo Garcia, 43, shot and killed his neighbors in front of a 3-year-old boy. Slain were Helen D. Giardina, 42, and her father, Albert “Jim” Alexander, 83.

The May 22 killings were the first in the Upper Ojai in more than two decades, officials said. And that they took place in front of Giardina’s young son made it even more disturbing for local residents.

Garcia has admitted committing the double homicide but has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

A chilling tape recording of a 911 phone call has Garcia admitting to the shooting and includes Giardina’s son shrieking in terror as he lies on top of his dead mother.

“Grandpa’s dead, and Mommy can’t wake up, she can’t wake up!” the boy cries to a dispatcher. “Can you help? . . . Please come.”

Just over three weeks before that double homicide, bank teller Monica Lynne Leech was shot execution-style during a Thousand Oaks bank robbery.

“There is no reason for Monica Leech or those two good people in Ojai to die,” said Ventura County Sheriff’s Capt. Larry Robertson, who leads the team of detectives that worked on both cases.

“I can’t explain why something like that could happen here any more than you could,” he said.

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The April 28 killing of Leech, a 39-year-old mother of two, attracted the notice of the CBS newsmagazine “48 Hours” and Fox’s “America’s Most Wanted.”

The increased attention prompted responses from all over the nation. But there have been no arrests in the case.

The tragedy was heightened by the fact that Leech took the job in Thousand Oaks because she presumed it would be safer than a teller job she had in Oxnard.

“What makes the Leech case different for Ventura County . . . is the absolute brutal and random nature of this arbitrary murder,” said Gary Auer, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Ventura office. “Because of the personal impact of a crime like this, the interest of the public is in having this lead to the arrest of the killers.”

The four crimes from across the county are disturbing, but officials said the reality is that it is safe here.

Random violence occurs, and there is not much that can be done about it.

“What can a person really do?” asked Robertson, a 29-year Sheriff’s Department veteran. “You can try and avoid dangerous areas, you could arm yourself, you can support local law enforcement, but beyond that you have to rely on the criminal justice system.

“It’s not perfect--based upon these acts of violence alone we know that. But we can’t hide in fear.”