After 8 Years, Trouble Still Stalks Oxnard Felon

Eight years after he gained national attention as the first person charged under the state’s then-new felony stalking law, an Oxnard man is scheduled to return to court today to face allegations that he recently harassed his ex-wife.

Back in October 1991, Mark David Bleakley was ordered to spend six months in a rehab center after being convicted of stalking an ex-girlfriend under a law that made it a felony to repeatedly stalk or harass someone.

In the latest case, authorities say, Bleakley, 37, telephoned his ex-wife, sent a letter to her family and drove by her house in September, all within days of being released from jail for battering and threatening to kill her.

The case is interesting because Bleakley is a habitual offender who has spent little time behind bars, despite the tougher laws, authorities said.

When he was sentenced in October 1991, Bleakley, a burly former carwash manager, had been charged with six assault, drug and weapons counts over the previous decade.

In February 1992, Bleakley left rehab months before his release date to search for his ex-girlfriend’s car in the parking lot of a gym where they used to work out. That landed him in prison for two years.

In April 1997, three years after marrying the woman in the current case, Bleakley was arrested for attacking her. The case was continued for more than two years until he pleaded guilty this summer, according to the district attorney’s office.

He was sentenced Sept. 17 to spend 60 days in jail but was given credit for time served and released because he had been in jail for two months awaiting sentencing, a prosecutor said.

The couple divorced in March, and the day after he was freed Bleakley allegedly violated his probation by contacting his ex-wife.

*

The state attorney general announced last week that Mexican pot growers had devised a way of eluding border authorities by moving their operations to California’s outback. As a consequence, a record number of pot farms were found and destroyed this year, many in Southern California.

Perhaps surprisingly, Ventura County’s own extensive rural areas were not involved in the crackdown, which proves either that our lands have been found unfit for colonization or that the farms have not been discovered.

Over the years, huge quantities of marijuana have been confiscated from hidden plantations in the county, but since January only about 2,000 plants have been spotted and destroyed, said Sheriff’s Sgt. Bob Garcia.

In 1997 and 1998, marijuana operations containing several thousand plants each were found. And 1996 was a banner year, when authorities uprooted more than 10,000 plants near Ojai, Garcia said.

“This has actually been a low year for us,” Garcia said. “The thing is, though, that just because we have low seizure doesn’t mean it’s not there. These things are hard to find.”

It’s a tricky business, said Garcia, because growers often dress in camouflage clothes and hike deep into the woods to plant. The plants are frequently placed in small bunches and hidden in canyons or in thick brush.

Often, the only way authorities learn of a pot operation is when walkers or hikers stumble across one and call police.

“We’ve run across supplies, backpacks and camouflage clothes and seeds, stashed on the side of the road,” Garcia said. “We know they’re out there.”

So far, the largest plantation found this year was in Los Padres National Forest north of Ojai, where a sheriff’s helicopter pilot discovered 662 high-grade pot plants last month valued at more than $1 million.

*

A couple whose company did thousands of dollars of work on city sidewalk projects in Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks have been charged with two dozen felonies, including allegations that they paid their employees far less than the prevailing state wage.

Laborers for D & M Construction were making between $8 and $10 an hour, instead of the $26-an-hour rate required by state law for public works projects, authorities said.

The case came to light when several workers complained to state employment officials after finishing a project in Simi Valley.

Between 1996 and 1998, company owners Daniel and Micki Davidovicz allegedly failed to pay more than $300,000 in wages and $100,000 in insurance premiums to the state, authorities said.

The couple are also charged with extortion for allegedly threatening to blackmail an undocumented Latino worker if he complained about his pay, said Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Barry Gale, whose office is prosecuting the case because the company is in West Hills.

The couple are scheduled to be arraigned in a week. Both are free since posting $163,000 bail. They face up to a dozen years in prison if convicted, Gale said.

“This is our bread and butter,” Gale said of labor fraud cases. “It’s not at all uncommon.”

This isn’t the first time the Davidoviczes have been in hot water.

In March, two dozen community leaders and residents staged a demonstration to protest the company’s alleged lack of black employees on a park-refurbishing job in a predominantly black community in Los Angeles.

*

Port Hueneme Police Sgt. Ken Dobbe said the recent death of an 11-month-old boy suffocated when his head got stuck between the seat and tray of a highchair points up a public safety issue.

“This is really a wake-up call for parents,” Dobbe said.

The Port Hueneme infant was sitting in a secondhand highchair with no safety belts when he tried crawling out and got stuck.

It is the county’s second accidental death this year of a child under 2 and the sixth since 1997, but the first involving a highchair, according to the county coroner’s office.

A 20-month-old infant died earlier this year after being tossed in the air by a parent and accidentally dropped. In 1998, two children under age 2 drowned, and one died in a fall. In 1997, a 23-month-old was accidentally run over by a car in a driveway.

Most baby deaths are from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or other medical or natural causes, authorities said. Others, though, are accidents, some of which could be prevented, they said.

Dobbe said parents should use only highchairs with safety belts.

*

E-mail can be sent to holly.wolcott@latimes.com.