Aspiring Oxnard Football Player Fatally Stabbed During Argument Over Woman

A 25-year-old Oxnard man who played semipro football and dreamed of making it to the NFL was stabbed to death during a fight with another man over the victim’s girlfriend, authorities said Wednesday.

Artis Charvelle Jackson was pronounced dead at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard just after 8 p.m. Tuesday from multiple stab wounds to the neck and back, said James Baroni, a senior deputy medical examiner for Ventura County.

Robert Hosea, who moved from Louisiana to Oxnard about eight months ago, turned himself in to Oxnard police four hours after the stabbing and was booked on suspicion of murder, Sgt. Jim Seitz said.

“He knew we wanted to talk to him, so he came in,” Seitz said of Hosea, who was dropped off at the Oxnard Police Department just after midnight by a friend. “These guys knew each other, and the incident was personal between them.”

Seitz would not say whether Hosea confessed to the crime.

Hosea was being held Wednesday at Ventura County Jail in lieu of $500,000 bail. His arraignment in Ventura County Superior Court is scheduled Friday.

Argument Precedes the Stabbing

Jackson was stabbed after a brief argument with Hosea in the parking lot of the Vineyard Avenue apartment unit the slain man shared with his girlfriend, their 7-year-old son and other relatives, authorities said.

Jackson worked in customer service for a credit card company in the San Fernando Valley, said his half-brother, Mario Robertson, 19. But his dream, which he pursued through daily weight-training sessions in his apartment, was to play for his favorite NFL team, the Denver Broncos.

“That would have been the ultimate,” Robertson said Wednesday. “He still wanted to make it in football and I believed in him, and even if I didn’t, he had it in his mind that he was going to do it. Now I’m in shock. My nephew has no father.”

At the time of his death, Jackson was making plans to try out for several Arena Football League teams, Robertson said.

Jackson played football for Hueneme High before moving on to Ventura College, said Jim Lane, the high school’s athletic director.

“I’m just dumbfounded,” Lane said. “Here is another young person getting killed, and you start wondering and try to make some sort of sense of it.”

Others at the school said that although he had moved on, Jackson would return occasionally to visit and show off pictures of his son.

He also played football briefly for Moorpark College and for Chapman University in Orange, Robertson said.

Most recently, he had played for the California Bandits, a Pasadena-based semipro football team.

Throughout Wednesday, Robertson took calls from friends, relatives and Oxnard investigators still trying to piece together the events that led up to the stabbing.

On the small kitchen table in the family apartment were photographs of Jackson, his girlfriend, Demetrice Folse, and his son.

By midday Wednesday, Seitz said, investigators had interviewed about 20 witnesses and were waiting to talk to several others.

Suspect Recently Met Victim’s Girlfriend

Hosea had met Folse recently when she baby-sat for his sister in Ventura, Robertson said, and Jackson and Hosea had also argued about her before Tuesday night.

The latest argument was brief, loud and violent, according to Robertson and others who said they witnessed it.

Robertson said Hosea parked his car in the rear of the complex and soon was confronted by Jackson. The two fought briefly before Hosea walked to his pickup truck and drove off, Robertson said. Jackson struggled to his feet and tried to walk, told his half-brother he had been stabbed and then collapsed, Robertson said.

“I was walking with my brother, telling him to hold on,” Robertson said. “His eyes were open, but he wasn’t saying anything.”

The homicide was the second in Oxnard in four days. On Saturday, a 61-year-old mentally disabled man died after being shot and his home firebombed. No arrests have been made in that case.