Port Hueneme Boy, 16, Fatally Stabbed Near Ventura Park

A 16-year-old Port Hueneme boy died Sunday of stab wounds after a confrontation between two groups of youths in a normally quiet Ventura neighborhood.

Police have no suspects in the death of Jose Lopez Navarro, who was stabbed about 1:40 a.m., after he and five friends were involved in an altercation with another group of youths near the entrance to Camino Real Park on Dean Drive, police said.

The slaying, which police have said is probably gang-related, shocked Navarro’s family as well as residents of the well-kept, single-family houses that make up the neighborhood where the teen-ager was killed.

“Jose had a lot of friends, and they were always coming to look for him to go out,” his sister Maria Navarro said, holding back sobs. “He was just a really friendly kid.”

Navarro did not think that her brother, a ninth-grader at Hueneme High School, was a gang member. “I don’t think he was in one. He never carried a knife or a weapon or anything,” she said.

The large, open park where Navarro met his assailants has long been a favorite nighttime spot for local gangs to hang out and drink beer. But Sunday’s stabbing was the first violent crime to spill over onto local streets, local residents said.

Ron Slade, 51, watched much of the attack from behind a fence on the side of his Dean Drive home. Standing in his driveway Sunday morning as Ventura Fire Department crews washed the blood from the street in front of his residence, Slade described parts of the confrontation that he witnessed.

“There were at least three or four kids yelling in Spanish, and it sounded like they were right over there,” he said, pointing toward the park. “It woke me up from a sound sleep.”

The noise drew Slade into the yard on the side of his house. Standing behind a fence that has often been the target of gang graffiti, Slade said he saw three young men, dressed in jeans and white T-shirts, chasing Navarro along the street.

Navarro was bleeding heavily, and he fell directly in front of Slade’s home.

“I saw him struggling, like he was still trying to crawl, and then I saw the three guys running away,” Slade said.

Almost immediately after Navarro fell into the street, a small, dark, two-door car pulled up, and several of his friends picked him up, put him in the trunk and sped away, Slade said.

They took him to Ventura County Medical Center, where he died less than an hour later, police said.

Six detectives spent most of Sunday morning and afternoon interviewing the five friends who were with Navarro during the attack in an attempt to identify the assailants, Ventura Police Sgt. Bob Anderson said. No suspects had been identified Sunday evening.

Although Anderson was reluctant to characterize Navarro, his friends or the assailants as gang members, he said the crime had all the markings of a gang slaying.

“From the circumstances, we are pretty confident that we will learn that some of the people involved were gang members,” Anderson said.

When asked about a motive for the slaying, Anderson would only say that Navarro appeared to have been “involved in something that happened earlier. One thing is a pay-back for another thing and then another incident occurs. The cycle goes on,” he said.

Gang activity at Camino Real Park has troubled Dean Drive residents for years, and Sunday morning’s stabbing highlighted those concerns.

Anderson admitted that the park--often used by families but also bearing random gang tags on benches and light posts--has been known to be a late-night haven for gang members. “It is very dark and secluded, and there is no way patrols can see the interior. But because the gate is blocked off (to vehicles), it still gives easy access to pedestrians,” he said.

A group of elderly women were discussing the slaying Sunday morning in the front yard of a home next to the park.

Each said they no longer go to the park after dark because of gang activity. Fear of possible retaliation led each to decline to allow their names to be published.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve had trouble there,” one woman said. “We’ve had fights there before and people getting arrested,” she said, adding that she has had bottles thrown into her back yard before.

“That park causes a lot of traffic from people who are not from this neighborhood,” one woman said. “A lot of drinking goes on in there and they leave the bottles all over the place.”