Racers a Drag for Residents

With electronic gates and bougainvillea hedges to guard their 70 homes, residents of Solimar Beach Colony north of Ventura have come to expect a little peace and quiet.

“This is not Malibu,” said Jenney Colborn, president of the colony’s homeowner association. “This is a colony that is quiet. Retired people and families.”

But the community’s tranquillity was shattered early Sunday morning by screeching tires and police sirens.

Authorities swooped in to bust up an illegal drag-racing competition, sending street racers scurrying--some scaling fences and others scrambling through an electronic gate of the gated community.

A few followed close behind residents’ vehicles entering the community before ditching their souped-up cars and fleeing, with Ventura County sheriff’s deputies and California Highway Patrol officers in pursuit, authorities said.

Once the commotion subsided and a few people were pulled from the bushes, 28 citations were handed out, CHP Officer Dodd Stolworthy said.

One car was impounded for vehicle code violations, he said.

Investigators also recovered a video camera containing footage of the illegal races, although no one had come forward to claim the equipment, Stolworthy said.

Longtime residents of the beachside community along the Ventura Freeway said they were more curious than concerned by the flurry of noise that jolted them awake.

“It’s a good thing I didn’t get ahold of them,” homeowner Tina Osborne said with a laugh.

“I can’t believe they would be so stupid. They could have killed someone.”

Residents say the revving engines and screeching tires recently have become a weekly event behind their homes, on a strip of Pacific Coast Highway stretching to Emma Wood State Beach.

Several said they have expressed their concerns to deputies and CHP officers who patrol the coastal strip from Silver Strand Beach in Oxnard to the Santa Barbara County line.

Colborn said that the homeowner group will consider making a formal presentation to the county Board of Supervisors.

“It was kind of a wake-up call for a sleepy little community,” said resident Phillip Lee, who shined a floodlight on a group of young men hiding in a clump of bushes behind his beachfront home.

He said on a typical Saturday night this summer, between 30 and 40 cars would line up to race on either side of Pacific Coast Highway. He said that they hadn’t caused any major problems.