UPDATED: Jimmy Villapando, identified as the suspect in Friday's Drown Street shooting, has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon and shooting at an occupied vehicle. He has been released after posting bail.
A man identified as 25-year-old Ojai resident Hugo Guerra was shot twice while in his vehicle in the 300 block of Drown Street late Friday afternoon, and taken to the Ojai Valley Community Hospital emergency room, according to Ojai Police Chief Bruce Norris. Guerra's injuries have been reported as non-life threatening. More information will be posted here as it is released.
23 comments:
Maybe if the cops sat jaw-jacking in the Regal's parking lot instead of the Nordhoff or old Honor Farm parking lots, they'd create more of a feeling of omnipresence which would help to curb the gang crime in the area it occurs most!
Oh, please, the police are not the problem, here.
When the police drive through neighborhoods, which is a great deterrent and appreciated by upstanding citizens, second-guessing whiners like you start talking about a "police state". You can't have it both ways.
Jeez. Never thought I'd see two pro-cop geeks lashing out at each other.
Why do you think they call them "patrol units"?
Keeping an eye on the local hoodlums by the local cops should be like shooting fish in a barrel. It is not like the greater L.A. basin where there are miles and miles of territory to cover. Ojai is confined to such a small area geographcially, and they pretty much know where all the baddies are. How is it possible the brats can get away with all the tagging and such without being seen? Seems to me the police maybe are not the problem, but they sure aren't the solution!
One gang member shot.
One gang member in jail.
This is a nice start.
Thank you, Capt. Bruce Norris and Ojai PD.
WOW!! drive by shootings in paradise. Why are you all dancing around the real problem?
As long as people are hiring the (illegal aliens) that hang around on the streets every day the gang problem will only increase because more will come. Clear the streets, if someone wants a job they go through the help wanted or an employment agency.
The only one's profiting from illegal workers are the one's hiring them, did you buy a house cheaper because the contractor used illegal workers? NO!! only he prospered while you pay for the anchor babies, the medical care at emergency wards, school and on and on.
Please don't respond with that tired old racism charge,it has nothing to do with it, it's about the law,who is breaking it and who is not enforcing it.
The Turner Diaries were right! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turner_Diaries
Wait a minute. What do illegal aliens have to do with the Drown Street shooting? Do we know the victim and suspect were not born and raised in Ojai? No. Has it been confirmed that this was a gang-related shooting? No. Slow down before making comments that may or may not apply. Sorry, I do not like when people don't leave their names, but I must remain anonymous.
well about gang related issues, ojai police does a great job,what we need is a stronger law rule, keep them in away for a long while? about the comment about having illegal aliens around, well if it weren't for them the fields are only done by them?when is a different race seen in the field picking off the plant/never instead they stand on corners and ask for money!Gang Members just definitely need to be given a stroner punishment?
I would like to offer a perspective different then those of the arm-chair critics. Though we all want problems to be solved, we must remember that simple solutions often create complex problems. This is not about race. This is not about gangs. This is not about cops. What happened on Drown St was a shooting involving three people: two drivers and one gunman.
Police investigations and court proceedings will no doubt draw light on the details of this unfortunate circumstance, putting many questions to ease. Who was involved? Was it gang related? Was it road rage? Were there drugs and alcohol involved? Ad Infinitum.
Yet none of these answers approach the root cause. To jump at the "old racism charge," and hide behind the, "look, I'm not racist, I'm just saying its the damn immigrants," is cowardice, ignorance, and self deceit. It is racism. It is elitism. It is one thread in a terribly tangled ball. Take a look at yourself.
Jumping to the assumption that this is gang related speaks only of our inner fears. Gangs are scary. It conjures primal traumas of the individual facing the masses, and the unraveling of civilized culture. Here lies perhaps are start at a solution.
This is, if anything, a societal problem. One anonymous complained about graffiti and cops not doing their jobs. Have you ever asked a police officer about graffiti, or their job, or ever spoken with them outside of your own traffic violation?
They will tell you that long streets offer an offender ample time to spot patrol cars and hide. Cruisers can drive problem streets all night, or day for that matter, and never even see perpetrators.
Does this leave us with the need for escalated police force, surveillance cameras, curfews, etc.? Seems logical at first, more control, less problem. Think about human nature though.
Push me and I'll push back.
Excessive control solves nothing. It creates two things...stagnation and fear. Stagnation leads to malaise and fear leads to hate.
Lets now say we must control immigration, gangs, youth, and anyone we see as outside of the norm. Especially those who work the strawberry fields. Sit with that for a while. Scared? I hope so, for this means you begin to see the real problem.
Control, by force, will only create more disaster. To control a plant you must feed it, water it, and tend the soil. Provide too stiff a steak and the stem grows week. Rather then increasing jail time, impressing stiffer penalties and exercising mental control tactics through scare programs, we should embrace our brothers and sisters and fight for harmony.
To suggest to the local police force that they should, "jaw-jack" somewhere closer to "problem" areas does no service to yourself or to those that have sworn to protect you. Changing parking spots would not have stopped one young man from shooting the other.
Creating healthy soil for plants to grow would.
Growing up in Ojai, I've known all the clicks, the Hispanics, the White boys with the lifted trucks, and everyone in between. Focusing on the above mentioned groups, these are the only 2 presenting a problem in this town. All of it is just a front they put up, there is no pride in what they do. They believe it is the only way to fit in with everyone else like them in this town. You're either hanging out with the white guys at campus, or the hispanics, and if you cross the lines, your pretty much known as a loser, or a nobody. You have to choose, whether you want to believe it or not, it's what happens. Violence and/or a really bad situation occurs 60-70% of the time when these 2 groups clash. For instance, if you're really hungry in the morning, go to Jim and Rob's in Ojai for a breakfast burrito, and wait for the kids to get out for lunch from "Chapparel." All you see is groups of the same walking with such dignity you'd think they owned this town. What I'm getting at is as long as these people decide to not intertwine with one another, the same shit is going to keep happening; over and over again. You either are going to blast you're radio with the bass up full blast rattling your car to pieces, or your going to get some stupid truck that was co-signed from mommy and daddy, and romp around tearing shit up around Ojai. Face the facts, this is hardly the town a kid 13-18 wants to grow up in. What's to do, hmmm...let's see. I don't have my license, I don't have a car...we can, walk to the skate park and loiter around all day, walk to libbey park and smoke some pot, and check out the ice cream shop, oh wait, there's a movie playing. But to be completely honest, there is NOTHING for kids to do in this town, regardless of what you're opinion might suggest. Let's go back to when I started high school in 1997...I didn't have my license until I was a late sophomore, so what did I do at night/weekends? I drove around with friends, stole some signs, paintballed some signs, drove over some signs, stole oranges, got drunk every weekend at some random guys party, did a different drugs every week with 50% of the rest of the populus of NHS. This is the god honest truth, and I'm sure a lot of you can understand that when there is nothing for a young soul to do in this town, people get bored, and resort to doing really stupid stuff that gets them into major trouble, and finds themselves hanging out with the wrong crowd. Case in point. Ojai, get up outta your chair and stop sucking up all this tourism $$$ going only towards new buildings, and points of interest gearing towards more tourists, equaling higher revenue, and fork over some money to build some stuff kids need. Get the bowling alley up and running again, open a dance club, or a miniature golf course to give Ojai Valley Inn a run for there money. All I'm saying is, if you give the kids something to do, that they actually WANT to do, then you've solved a fraction of the problem. Get them off the streets, and out of trouble.
I am SOOOO over the "there's nothing for kids to do in this town." Bull#@(&! What about the huge cities with gang problems, what's their excuse? It all comes down to parenting. Where/who are their parents? And now, in the gang world of tit for tat, we now have to worry about the inevitable retaliation from the rival gang, no doubt fully armed, with parents who don't give a damn.
Both shooter and victim are males in their mid-20s, and have Latino last names. Pretending that race or gangs have nothing to do with this is wishful Pollyannaish thinking, at best.
Women, or police, or bored 13-18 year olds are not to blame here.
One gang member shot.
One gang member in jail.
This is a nice start.
Thank you Bruce Norris and Ojai PD???
(Signed Bruce Norris' mom?)
Pu-lease!
Sounds to me like no real high faluttin' detective work here. Sounds to me like shootee survived and ID'd the shooter!
How can you shoot someone TWICE and the attempted murder charge is dropped? This may be the real issue here.
this is for the uneducated person in regards to the illegal alien comment you must really be on top of your game given the high level of education you have obtained.
i'm guessing you are going off thier last names and the fact that they are latinos. let us not forget that our forefathers came here illegally. as the native americans are the only true residents of this great nation of ours.
i'm sure your forefathers took great pride in coming here in covered wagons stinking to high heaven unbathed teeth rotting out and commiting genocide by killing indians as there were called by the 1000's its people like you who are dangers limited inteligance and ready to blame everyone else but your self and unwilling to take a leader ship role in your comunity to better things for yourself and others. but hey what can you expect from those who do not even take the time to educate themselves.
answer me this when a white man rapes, kills or robes someone are you as quick to say damn another white man has commited a crime. another great pure white man who single handly built this nation has commited a crime agianst one of his fellow citizens. i really doubt you get all worked up because god forbide you see the real issue at hand.
Ojai is a great place to live in yes we have crime just like any other city. But the one thing we should not allow ourselves to tolrate is someone thinking its okay to shoot someone and go home and act as if nothing wrong was done.
AS an Ojai native and a long time resident of this neighborhood we should never put our heads down or look the other way. i would agree with you sir if you said we should take up arms and defend our homes form cowards who shoot people without even thinking about it,
People who behave like animals because that is what the shooter is an animal who for one moment of rage put aside all he worked for his family his love for his freedom. only an animal would behave this way.
You know why there is a gang problem because for too long people looked the other way instead of taking the gloves off and addressing this issue with a firm hand we find ways to look the other way.
If your an animal guess what your going to be treated like one !!!!. no lawerys just good old fashion justice. you cross the line then the book deserves to be thrown at you.
Regardless of who you are how about stripping your citizenship away and sending you out of the country like an exile..
That sounds good but you know what they will just cross the border and become an illegal .
We are spening over 1 billion dollars a week or a month over seas, some crazy number helping people who do not want to be helped. we need that help for our police dept to effectivly fight crime supply fire fighters with brand new equipment. schools for our kids, streets paved.
Thats what we need over 1 billion a month i assure you crime would be down.
thank you ojai native !!!!
I must say I'll have to agree with the comment about these people behaving like animals, and also the comment about parenting. I find it so ironic that the parents of these young people are probably very hard working people, so WHY do they allow their kids to run rampant like this? And I think Rob Clement probably missed the point of the comment about sitting in parking lots jaw jacking...how changing parking spots would probably not have kept this from happening. The comment about "patrol units" hit it on the head. Unless someone does a crime right in front of a couple of parked cop cars, they are most likely not gonna get caught! Ok, so lets put the cops in cars that are not black and white with tons of radio gear on the roofs. Lets put them in souped up rice burners like most of these kids drive and maybe they'll be able to blend in a bit more and catch them in the act. I DID like Clement's comment about creating healthy soil for plants to grow. It ALL starts at home. The nut does NOT fall far from the tree.
to Ojai native
I find it very interesting you question my education,or lack of,you should look to your own education,especially your spelling. If your an Ojai native how is it you missed spelling class all those years of school? I would like to give a break and think you just had typing errors,I'm not much of a typist myself,but you mis-spelled too many words and too many of the same words several times.
I love a good discussion with different points of view,if I didn't I wouldn't say anything,but remarks like yours to someone you disagree with is not a discussion,it's what leads to fights and then shootings and that's what this blog is about.
As for the money being sent to People who don"t want our help,how about the 2.3 billion sent to Mexico from legal and illegals living here. That could fix our streets also,better still if they can afford to send that to Mexico
it would be nice if they bought health insurance and quit over taxing the emergency wards.
When you attack me instead of just stating a point of view I attack back,unfortunately,but that is what you seem to understand PROFESSOR!!
Ojai native---right!
What do The Turner Diaries have to do with this? The victim and the attacker are both Latinos.
yay, now we're fighting each OTHER! and anonymously, at that!
i got the most clarity from Rob...good insights, methinks, and not trying to hide from the root causes/problems. if there's ONE thing we know how to do in this country, it's "treat" the symptoms and totally ignore the disease. gang shootings? more police. need oil? more bombs.
they're part-and-parcel of the same surface-level philosophy, and even with one eye open we can all see how well that's ultimately proving to work. i applaud and encourage and support any efforts to address and compassionately deal with the roots of why people shoot each other.
Evan,
This blog may be past the point of interest, maybe not. But I want to take this opportunity regardless to applaud your clear and concise observation of the deeper strands of this ongoing discussion. It seems the majority of those involved (not all of course) are stuck in the mire of irrational thought, most likely fueled by agents of long-ingrained fear based ideologies. Perhaps a blog is not the best forum to discuss a brighter and more evolved future. Perhaps it is the best. Simply put, I feel sorry for my brethren who fail to see past their own noses, for this is the catalyst of malaise.
And such strong emotions devoid of the backing of a name. How deeply are they really felt, if there is no willing owner? Mr. Anonymous sure talks a lot.
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