Ex-Gang Member, Mentor to Teens Fatally Stabbed

He was an ex-gang member with a prison record who moved here last summer to build a new life. Friends say he was succeeding, and mentoring children in the process.

Then on Monday morning, in the alley behind his home, within shouting distance of police headquarters, 28-year-old Jesse “Shorty” Rivas was stabbed to death.

It was the sixth homicide in Ventura County this year.

Rivas had been sentenced to seven years in prison for burglary. He served his time at Corcoran State Prison and then at Pelican Bay before being released last August, police said. Friends said he once was affiliated with a Northern California gang, but had broken away. He was training to become a professional boxer.

Investigators are not assuming the stabbing was gang related, said Oxnard Police Sgt. Lee Wilcox. They were still looking for a suspect and a motive late Monday.

The stabbing was called in by Rivas’ sister, with whom he lived in the 100 block of C Street, only two blocks from the Oxnard Police Department, Wilcox said.

Wilcox said it was not clear what brought Rivas outside to the alley about 7:25 a.m. Monday; the 5-feet-2, 132-pound amateur boxer was wearing casual clothing and a pair of sandals and had no weapons, money or drugs on him. Rivas’ girlfriend said he often took the trash out to the trash can in the alley in the morning.

Rivas was pronounced dead at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard about an hour after the stabbing.

Later Monday morning, grieving family and friends embraced outside the hospital, several of them wailing and sobbing. One was Rivas’ pregnant 17-year-old girlfriend, who met the boxer at a local Boys & Girls Club gym last summer, shortly after his release from prison.

The couple had been making arrangements for the baby’s birth when they last spoke during a telephone call Sunday night.

The girlfriend said she doesn’t know why anyone would stab Rivas. She said he had some problems in Northern California, where he lived before his incarceration. But in Oxnard, she said, “Nothing ever happened. He never had any contact with the cops or any fights or anything.”

Rocky Garza, 44, Rivas’ trainer and the head coach and coordinator at the Mid-City Boxing Gym in Oxnard, said Rivas impressed him because he was honest about his past and determined to make something of himself.

In addition to training at the gym, Rivas was a volunteer, coaching teenage boys through a program sponsored by the Police Activities League.

“This kid was doing real good, real good, considering what he’d been through the last few years,” Garza said. He added that Rivas never talked in detail about prison or gang experiences, but he often told the boys he coached to stay away from gangs and drugs because the consequences were terrible.

“He said he wanted to be a champion but he also wanted to go back to school and be a counselor so other kids wouldn’t make the same mistakes he did,” Garza said.

Garza last spoke to Rivas over the weekend, after Rivas lost a match at an amateur Christian boxing tournament in San Diego.

The conversation turned to Rivas’ tattoos. Garza told the boxer he should consider getting them removed if he wanted to continue competing in Christian tournaments and if he had any Olympic dreams. Judges in those circles would not look kindly on tattoos, Garza told him.

Rivas told his coach he wished he’d never gotten the tattoos. “He said that was the biggest mistake he’d made,” Garza said. “He knew it attracted attention.”

At the boxing gym Monday night, 16-year-old David Rodela arrived for practice early with a stack of photographs from a recent tournament. Some pictures showed Rodela with his gloves up in a classic boxing pose, standing next to Rivas. Rodela was excited about showing the photos to Rivas, whom he considered like an older brother.

“Where’s Jesse?” Rodela asked Garza, who then gathered Rodela and about eight other young boxers together and broke the news.

Rodela and the other young men bowed their heads, tears streaming from their eyes. The youths said Rivas served as an inspiration and mentor.

“He’s always there in my corner, cheering me on, telling me I’m going to make it,” Rodela said, blinking back tears. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

During training, 17-year-old Luis Garcia said, Rivas used to jog behind him and push him to run faster.

“I ran with him yesterday,” Garcia said. “He told me to meet me here tonight at 5:30 p.m. He said, ‘See ya later, man. Take care. Tomorrow we’ll train hard.’ ”

Times staff writer Tracy Wilson and Times Community News reporters Pam Johnson and Holly Wolcott contributed to this report.