County Homicide Total Up for 2001

Deadly domestic violence in suburban Simi Valley and several officer-involved shootings in Oxnard helped push up the number of Ventura County homicides for the second straight year.

Countywide in 2001, there were 31 homicides, four more than last year, said Craig Stevens, senior deputy medical examiner. There were 23 in 1999.

Oxnard recorded the most homicides this year with 13, while county areas patrolled by the Sheriff’s Department logged eight. Simi Valley had six homicides and Ventura four.

Among the county’s most high-profile murder cases was the July shooting death of 20-year-old Moorpark College student Megan Barroso. Her body was discovered a month later in a remote canyon area southeast of Simi Valley after a massive search by authorities and volunteers.

Simi Valley resident Vincent Henry Sanchez was charged with her murder and a series of rapes and sexual assault crimes that terrorized the city over the past five years.

Simi Valley, routinely ranked as one of the safest cities in the nation, saw some of the most violent episodes in 2001. Five of the city’s homicides involved domestic disputes. The sixth was a stabbing at a house party.

Police Chief Randy Adams said the spike in violent crimes was an aberration but also a wake-up call for residents. The six homicides this year followed two consecutive years when there was only one.

“It was an unusual year for us,” Adams said. “In the last six months we have had more homicides than we had in the last three years, but we don’t believe it to be a trend. . . . It underscores the fact that no matter how safe your community is you are not immune from tragic acts.”

The deadly violence began in June when Geno Patrick Colello, a 35-year-old off-duty Los Angeles police officer, fatally shot his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, Keith Thomas Ewing, in front of the man’s Sutter Avenue home. Colello then took his own life.

In September, Thousand Oaks resident Reynaldo Herrera Rodriguez walked into the Simi Valley home of a woman he had dated briefly and fatally shot the woman’s grandmother, Esperanza Martinez, 80; brother, Ricardo Calderon, 12; and daughter, Shantal Rios, 4. Three other family members were injured in the attack. Two days later, Herrera took his own life while fleeing from authorities in Los Padres National Forest.

A month later, Los Angeles County firefighter William Oney allegedly shot and killed the father of his wife’s son after a heated argument in Oney’s Waco Drive home. Oney told police he shot Todd Michael Thies, who was unarmed, because he feared for his own safety. Oney was taken into custody briefly but was never charged with a crime. He was released and has been ordered to court in January.

Experts said such emotionally charged crimes are more common than people realize.

“I’m surprised there are not more [domestic violence homicides],” said Vickie Weiner, executive director of the Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence. “People need to know that domestic violence is deadly, and we see it over and over again.”

In Oxnard, five officer-involved shootings put the number of homicides at 13 this year. Three of the victims had a history of mental illness.

The first episode occurred Jan. 10 when a SWAT officer shot and killed Richard Lopez, 17, as he held a female student hostage at Hueneme High School. Lopez had previously undergone treatment for hallucinations.

In May, officers responding to a report of a man peering into apartment windows, shot and killed Rutilio Castillo, 23, after he walked toward them with a knife. Months earlier, Castillo had been placed in a 72-hour mental health hold after he came to the police station to report that someone was trying to kill him and refused to leave.

In August, Robert Lee Jones, an emotionally troubled artist living with his parents on Bahia Drive, was shot and killed after he allegedly moved toward officers with a 13-inch knife. He had been hiding in a closet.

Oxnard police have said that the officers had no choice but to shoot Jones because their lives were in danger. But they have also said that a final determination of whether the shooting was legally justified won’t be made until the Ventura County district attorney’s office and a special state attorney general’s inquiry are completed.

Jones, who was suffering from depression, had seen a psychiatrist a week before he was killed. But he had refused to take medication, according to his mother, Ida Perkins.

Jones’ father has filed a $50-million lawsuit in federal court, alleging that police provoked the confrontation that led to the shooting. The suit also alleges that Oxnard police are not properly trained to deal with the mentally ill.

Since the shooting, the Ventura County Mental Health Board has formed a task force with representatives from police agencies across the county to find ways to stem deadly confrontations with the mentally ill.

A Times analysis in September revealed that Oxnard police had fatally shot more people in the first eight months of 2001 than peace officers in many U.S. cities do in a year.

Oxnard Major Crimes Sgt. Jim Seitz cautioned against reading too much into the rash of shootings in 2001. Police work is often unpredictable, Seitz said, adding that life-and-death judgments must often be a made in a split second.

“This was an extremely unusual year,” said Seitz, an 18-year veteran of the Oxnard Police Department, who is usually among the first investigators at the scene of any officer-involved shooting.

“There is always the potential to use deadly force, but I don’t think anyone comes into this business expecting to take a life.”

Among the other homicides in Ventura County in 2001:

* The April shooting death of grocery clerk Alejandro Alvarez, 35, inside the Central Market on Ventura Avenue in which the two co-owners of the store were wounded. Alvarez had lived in Ventura for 11 years and was married, with two daughters, ages 10 and 13.

* The man accused of killing Alvarez, Alfonso Acosta Delgado Jr., 25, was shot and killed by Ventura police on May 13 after a five-hour standoff behind his grandmother’s Channel Drive home.

* In July, James Richard Clark, 58, a homeless man who was popular among surfers and beachcombers in Ventura, was beaten and stoned to death in his sleeping bag at a Ventura River encampment. Four Ventura teenagers have been charged with his death and are awaiting trial.

* On Dec. 6, a Panorama City man was arrested and later charged with murder in the slaying of his common-law wife, whose dismembered body he allegedly dumped into the ocean. Tile setter Alfonso Castillo, 37, is accused of killing Maria Guadalupe Pinaloza Ambrio, 34. He has yet to enter a plea and will be back in court Jan. 10.