Man Shot Dead in Apparent Dispute

A man was fatally shot Monday evening after arguing with two assailants in a south Oxnard neighborhood.

The man, whose name and age were not released by late Monday evening, was shot just after 7 p.m. while sitting on his bicycle in a parking lot along the 3500 block of Samuel Avenue, said Sgt. Lee Wilcox, a homicide investigator with the Oxnard Police Department.

The man was taken to St. John’s Regional Medical Center but doctors were unable to save him.

His bicycle and a dark jacket lay in a heap next to a pool of blood in the lot behind a Payless shoe store. Shell casings from a small-caliber semiautomatic weapon were sprinkled about the scene.

Neighbors watched from their windows for much of the evening as police investigators sorted through evidence and interviewed a few witnesses.

Witnesses told police that the man had been riding around the neighborhood on his bicycle for about an hour. He circled around again just before 7 p.m., met up with two people in the parking lot, and they began to talk, Wilcox said.

A loud argument started and the cyclist was shot several times, he said.

Police received conflicting descriptions of the assailants. Some witnesses described seeing two young men, but others said they saw a man and a woman talking to the victim just before the shooting.

The two assailants were last seen running across Saviers Road, Wilcox said.

Anyone with any information on the shooting is asked to contact the Oxnard Police Department’s major crimes division at 385-7605.