Slaying Is Oxnard’s 25th of the Year

A 21-year-old man was shot to death late Saturday on an Oxnard street, the 25th slaying in the city this year and the third in the Colonia neighborhood in a little more than a month.

Ricardo Veronica was found shortly before midnight Saturday on a residential sidewalk in the 1400 block of East 2nd Street on the city’s north end.

An autopsy performed Sunday revealed that Veronica, who lived in Oxnard with his parents, died from multiple gunshot wounds possibly inflicted by more than one weapon, said Mitch Breese, an investigator with the Ventura County medical examiner’s office.

Oxnard Police detectives said they do not have a motive for the killing but have not ruled out the possibility it was gang-related.

Online records from Ventura County Superior Court show no indications that Veronica was a gang member. He had a few small brushes with the law, including a conviction for public intoxication in 2002, for which he paid a $280 fine and was ordered to spend five days in jail.

Gang violence has plagued the largely Latino neighborhood for many years. Two slayings occurred in late November but authorities said it does not appear the three cases are related. No arrests have been made in any of the attacks.

On Nov. 18, farmworker Alberto Lopez, 27, of Oxnard was fatally shot while standing in the driveway of a home in the 400 block of North McKinley Avenue.

On Nov. 22, Jorge Ruiz Martinez, 36, of Oxnard was beaten to death on the front lawn of a home in the 400 block of North Roosevelt Avenue. Martinez had been at a nearby home attending a family party when he was followed outside and attacked.

Veronica’s death is the 49th homicide in the county this year, compared with 23 last year. In 2002, Oxnard had 11 killings.

Oxnard Police Chief Art Lopez told The Times late last month that part of the surge in violence can be attributed to contract killings ordered by prison gangs.