Restaurateur Fatally Shot Inside Home

The owner of a popular downtown restaurant was shot to death during a home-invasion robbery over the weekend after arriving at his Ondulando-area residence and finding that three armed intruders had stormed in on his wife and two children, authorities said.

Investigators said Sunday they were still looking for the three men who shot 35-year-old Felipe Arambula on Saturday night inside his upscale home on the 700 block of Monte Vista Avenue.

The men broke in shortly after 10 p.m. and confronted Arambula’s wife, Yazmin, 32, demanding to know when her husband would return home from working at the Taqueria Vallarta restaurant, authorities said.

When Arambula arrived, authorities said, the men jumped him, chased him into the master bedroom and shot him several times.

Officials said Arambula was taken to Ventura County Medical Center, where he died. His wife and two children--one 3 years old and the other 14 months old--were not hurt and were staying with family members.

“We believe the intent was to rob the husband when he came home,” Sgt. George Morris of the Ventura Police Department said.

The assailants fled after the shooting and were still at large Sunday night, police said.

At the Main Street eatery that Arambula has owned since 1994, employees Sunday were shocked and saddened by his death. They described him as a kind man who didn’t have any enemies.

“He was a good person and he took care of all of his employees,” said Jose Morales, 34, who worked for Arambula for two years. Morales was told early Sunday about the incident, and later opened the restaurant for the day.

“He worked hard and was very responsible,” said an emotional Morales. “He was more than my employer; he was like a member of my family.”

Arambula had lived in the Monte Vista Avenue home for a little more than a year, neighbors said Sunday. They said he and his family kept mostly to themselves, though neighbors recalled his wife circulated a flier for a Tupperware party about three weeks ago.

On Sunday at the Arambula home, with its manicured lawn and colorful flowers, shards of glass lay in the backyard below a window where the screen had been mangled and torn to one side.

Neighbors said they did not hear gunshots Saturday night nor detect any disturbance in the neighborhood, which rises above Foothill Road and offers a spectacular ocean view.

Brenda Janowski said she heard her neighbor’s dogs barking about 10 a.m. Sunday, which was unusual, she said. Janowski said her son got up and looked out the window and saw emergency vehicles at the Arambula home across the street.

Investigators questioned Janowski on Saturday night after the shooting, but she said she could provide little information.

“I asked how serious it was, and they said about as serious as it gets,” said Janowski, looking across the street Sunday at the white stucco home with green trim, as plainclothes detectives went door-to-door asking questions.

“The most law-breaking we usually have here are the speeders,” she said. “It’s certainly not the kind of thing you expect to happen in Ventura and certainly not up here.”

One neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said she heard a strange noise about 10 p.m. Saturday that sounded like a window screen or piece of wood being pried off.

She went outside to check on the noise, but said she didn’t see anything and went to bed.

When she awoke Sunday morning, she said, the front of the Arambula house had been sealed off by yellow police tape.

“I didn’t hear any shots, nothing,” the neighbor said. “But to wake up and find this is very scary.”

Jim and Jennifer Nelson, who live one street away, said they saw the police activity as they returned home Saturday night. They drove up to investigate but did not sense much urgency in the police response so they drove away.

It wasn’t until detectives knocked on their door Sunday morning that they learned what had occurred.

“It is a very nice neighborhood,” Jim Nelson said. “But I’d say property values just went down $10,000.”

Coroner’s officials were performing an autopsy Sunday, but the results were not immediately available. Authorities could not say how many times Arambula had been shot or whether there was more than one gunman in the house.