Oxnard police investigate homicide; victim ID'd
A 17-year-old was found dead from gunshot wounds in Oxnard's fourth homicide of 2017, police said.
Luis Rodriguez, of Oxnard, was pronounced dead at 10:30 p.m. Monday along the 400 block of North Bonita Avenue after police responded to a report of a gunshot victim, authorities said.
Officers discovered the victim in the street upon their arrival at the scene, officials said. The officers and emergency medical personnel provided first aid to Rodriguez, although he later died at the scene, authorities said.
The Oxnard police major crimes unit responded to the incident and launched its investigation.
The intersection of Colonia and Bonita streets, part of Oxnard's La Colonia neighborhood, was closed to traffic as police began their investigation, authorities said.
Police, including a K-9 unit, swarmed the area that was otherwise quiet, except for a woman who was walking on the street trying to locate her son, who she said was not home.
The shooting marked the continuation of a violent 2017 for the La Colonia neighborhood.
In January, a woman was slain by her husband on Juanita Avenue, blocks away from the site of the Monday's homicide. That shooting led to a countywide manhunt for the suspect who was later arrested in Somis.
On March 13, a 44-year-old man was shot and killed on Dolores Court, just shy of a mile from the homicide on Juanita Avenue. That case remains under investigation.
Violence seeps into daily life
Despite the recent events, life in La Colonia continued as usual.
Tuesday was trash day in the neighborhood, and residents of North Bonita could be seen loading and cleaning their bins. Two women were hosing down their trash cans in a small front yard, seemingly enjoying the sun.
At Cesar E. Chavez school, within sight of January's shooting at a modest house on Juanita Avenue, students in physical education uniforms ran around a fenced-in field.
Sounds of small children could also be heard from a child development center, also on Juanita.
On Tuesday morning, Veronica Frazier, 39, was walking on North Bonita Avenue, having visited a La Colonia resident.
"There seems to be no value for life," said Frazier, rattling off a list of recent incidents of violence around the city.
"Even if they're not dying," she added. "It's frustrating."
"It's normal. That's what scary," she said.
Sabrina Pond, 46, assistant director of the Green Valley Child Development Center on Juanita Avenue, has witnessed many acts of violence in the neighborhood since she starting worked there in 2003.
According to Pond, the violence seeps into the daily lives of her students.
When I hear about a shooting, I have to think about kids coming to school distraught, she said.
Pond recalled a particularly violent time years prior.
"Kids were stressed and showing it," she said.
In response to the concerns of children over not only violence but immigration, Pond began to let her students journal their feelings instead of ignoring the issues.
"You can see the stress," she repeated.
Read more:
- Oxnard slaying is city's first of year
- Police hunt husband after Oxnard woman slain
- Man killed in Oxnard shooting
Click on the icons on the map below to learn more: