Suspect Dies in Fall From Cliff During Chase

A suspected car thief plunged more than 60 feet to his death Sunday night after sheriff’s deputies chased him from a stolen vehicle he abandoned at a campground near California 150.

Ernesto Edwardo Acosta, 22, of Santa Paula climbed a chain-link fence in the dark to elude deputies and fell down a steep cliff to a creek bed, said Eric Nishimoto, a Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman.

“It was a guy trying to get away and he made a horrible mistake,” Nishimoto said.

A deputy nearly met the same fate when he attempted to follow Acosta over the fence but was pulled back at the last second by another deputy more familiar with the terrain, he said.

“It was real dangerous out there, because you couldn’t see anything,” Nishimoto said of the moonless and partly cloudy night.

Acosta, who had previously been convicted for drug possession and felony assault, was the third officer-involved fatality in Ventura County in less than two weeks.

Five days earlier, police chased and shot a 22-year-old Oxnard gang member after he reportedly brandished a gun at officers. And on Jan. 10, a mentally ill 17-year-old was fatally wounded by an Oxnard SWAT team marksman after he held a high school student at gunpoint during lunch hour in what officials considered a “suicide by cop.”

The Sunday incident began shortly before 11 p.m. after Acosta reportedly ran a red light at 12th and Main streets in Santa Paula. Sheriff’s deputies from the Fillmore station, who were assisting Santa Paula police on an unrelated robbery call, picked up the chase. Santa Paula officers also joined the pursuit.

Acosta was driving with two male and two female passengers in a 1998 Chevrolet Impala that authorities said belonged to the girlfriend of one of the passengers, Gustavo Ramirez, 19, of Santa Paula.

Acosta sped out of Santa Paula and onto a dark, northbound stretch of California 150 before turning into the entrance to Steckel Park. The car sped over a bridge that crosses Santa Paula Creek before backtracking over a one-lane road that ended in a dead end in front of the fence, Nishimoto said.

Acosta and Ramirez jumped out of the car and ran. Ramirez took off through the campground before finding his way to the highway, where he was arrested and booked on suspicion of vehicle theft, Nishimoto said.

Before deputies found him, Ramirez reportedly called the girlfriend whose car the group had taken and asked her to come pick him up on highway, authorities said.

Meanwhile, Acosta climbed the 5-foot chain-link fence. On the other side was a 6-foot-wide stretch of muddy earth and then the cliff. His body wasn’t recovered until daylight, Nishimoto said.

A deputy kept the three other passengers in the back seat of the Impala at gunpoint while they were questioned before their release, authorities said. Nishimoto said more than a gallon of beer was found in the car’s back seat.

Acosta was on parole for a felony drug possession conviction, Nishimoto said.

Undersheriff Craig Husband said there were no similarities between Sunday night’s accident and the shooting deaths of Richard “Midget” Lopez at Hueneme High School and Charles Joseph Valdez in downtown Oxnard.

“I think the deputies did an outstanding job,” Husband said. “I don’t see a connection at all.”

The sheriff’s helicopters and sirens woke residents of Far West Resorts, a private campground in Steckel Park popular with motor-home users, day workers and long-term vacationers.

“We never see anything like that here,” said Cindy Jalife, who along with her husband, Danny, own the 70-acre campground above the Steckel Park picnic and camping area. “It’s usually very quiet. You feel like you are far from the city, although town is only a few miles away.”