Seabee Is Killed by Police Car

A 20-year-old Seabee was struck and killed by an Oxnard police car responding to a call early Tuesday as the sailor attempted to cross Ventura Road.

Christopher Shubert of Pembroke, Mass., died at the scene after the collision, which occurred about 4:20 a.m., officials said.

Officer Humberto Jimenez, a 16-year veteran of the Police Department, was alone in the car at the time. Jimenez was treated for minor injuries at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard and released, officials said.

Shubert was crossing Ventura Road mid-block, just north of Channel Islands Boulevard and about 100 feet north of the crosswalk, when he was struck by Jimenez’s patrol car, officials said.

Just before the accident, Shubert had been having a meal with seven members of his battalion at a nearby restaurant. He left to buy a pack of cigarettes at a store across the four-lane Ventura Road.

As he returned, Shubert was hit by the southbound police cruiser, said Officer Steven Funk.

“We’ll never know why he decided to go that route,” Funk said.

Members of Shubert’s unit at the naval base said they were stunned.

Shubert was athletic and enjoyed playing racquetball, said Steve Boyce, a member of the unit. One of Shubert’s main jobs during a recent deployment to Okinawa, Boyce said, was making sure that living areas were up to military code.

Boyce, whose wife, Arlene, gave birth to the first child born in 2002 in Ventura County, described Shubert as “someone you always wanted to have around.”

“His poor family,” Boyce said. “They’re all so far away. He should have been home with them for the new year.”

Investigators said preliminary findings indicate that Shubert hit the front driver’s side of the car above the wheel well and was tossed onto the windshield.

At the time of the collision, Jimenez was on his way to assist another officer on a domestic disturbance call in south Oxnard, Funk said.

Oxnard police did not say how fast Jimenez was traveling, but the collision knocked Shubert out of his shoes and carried him about 100 feet into a crosswalk at the intersection of Ventura Road and Channel Islands Boulevard.

He died of head and chest injuries, said Armando Chavez, senior deputy medical examiner.

More than seven hours after the collision, investigators from the California Highway Patrol and the Oxnard Police Department were still collecting evidence at the scene. The intersection, which is adjacent to Naval Base Ventura County in Port Hueneme, where Shubert was stationed, remained closed to traffic in both directions until about noon.

The dented patrol car, with its smashed-in windshield, remained near the intersection. CHP officials said it will take at least a week for them to complete the investigation.

The death was the only fatality on Ventura County roadways over the long holiday weekend, officials said. The Ventura County office of the CHP made 29 arrests for driving under the influence between 6 p.m. Friday and Tuesday evening.

Shubert was a utilities constructionman stationed with Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 5 at the Port Hueneme base, said spokeswoman Teri Reid. He returned in December from a six-month deployment in Okinawa with the other 600 people in his unit, the spokeswoman said.

The fatality was the first involving base military personnel since March of 2000, when 30-year-old Patrick Sulit Nazareno, an electronics technician at the Port Hueneme base, was killed after losing control of his Acura on Potrero Road in Camarillo, Reid said.

Petty Officer 1st Class Johnny Shields, Shubert’s platoon commander, said the sailor “will definitely be missed in the platoon. He had a great future.”