Court Hears Stabbing Suspect’s 911 Call

A 43-year-old Camarillo man accused of stabbing to death his girlfriend downed a bottle of vodka at a neighbor’s home in the hours before her slaying, then called police afterward as he lay bleeding on his kitchen floor with a knife by his side, according to testimony Friday.

A breathless Charles Michael Smith spoke irrationally to Ventura County sheriff dispatcher Julie Henry in a 911 call made about 10 p.m. Dec. 20. A recording of the call was played in Ventura County Superior Court at Smith’s preliminary hearing.

“I’m dead. I’m dead,” Smith said. “I love you. I love you.”

A few minutes later, officers arrived at the couple’s apartment in the 700 block of Mobil Avenue to find Smith lying on his back in the kitchen with a cordless phone at his ear and a large kitchen knife a few inches away, according to testimony from Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputy Brent Johnson.

Smith was bleeding from puncture wounds to the chest and knee.

His girlfriend, Pamela Scott-Ostrem, 40, was found near the bathroom, face down in a pool of blood.

Smith was released from the hospital four days later and taken into custody. He is being held on $500,000 bail. His arraignment on one count of murder is scheduled March 3.

Ventura County Medical Examiner Ronald O’Halloran testified that Scott-Ostrem suffered a 10-inch deep stab wound to her right lung and right breast, cuts to the thigh and “defense-type wounds” to the arm and hand.

Earlier that evening, Smith and Scott-Ostrem surprised their next-door neighbors, Anthony and Lisa Chambers, with a visit about 5:30 p.m. Chambers testified that Smith drank two beers and then asked for another drink, “and the next thing I knew the fifth [of vodka] was gone.”

Soon, Smith was staggering around his neighbor’s apartment. As he and Scott-Ostrem walked out, Smith tried to kiss Chambers’ wife and stumbled into a door, Chambers testified.

“He was obviously drunk,” Chambers testified.

After the couple left, Chambers found Scott-Ostrem’s sandals in his house. As he tossed them on her doorstep, he heard a door slam and Smith shout, “You’ll pay for that!”

Scott-Ostrem, a respiratory therapist who couldn’t work after suffering brain damage from a 1992 car accident, had lived in the apartment with Smith just two months before she was killed.

Although neighbors said the couple were quiet and seemed to get along well, police said they had responded to domestic violence calls in the past at the couple’s Mobil Avenue apartment and a previous Camarillo residence.