Slaying Marks 14th in Oxnard

Oxnard recorded its 14th homicide of the year Sunday when a man was found with several gunshot wounds to the head and slumped in the passenger seat of a car.

The victim, a young man with several tattoos who has not yet been identified, died at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard about 8:30 a.m., an hour after he was found in an alley in the 4200 block of Terrace Avenue.

Authorities received a 911 call from a resident reporting gunfire in the neighborhood about 7:30 a.m.

Sunday’s killing was the second in the city in less than a week and the fourth in less than a month. Oxnard had 12 homicides for all of 2002.

The owner of the car told police he had loaned it to a friend who was not the victim, said Oxnard Police Cmdr. Scott Whitney. No witnesses had come forward as of Sunday afternoon, Whitney said, but detectives ask anyone with information to call 385-7605.

The fatal shooting is the second in the Terrace Avenue neighborhood in less than a month. On May 25, a day when three people were killed in the city, gunfire was reported in the 4900 block of Terrace Avenue.

David Anthony Zuniga and Ralph Ismael De La Cerda were at a party when they stepped onto an apartment patio to smoke cigarettes. They were shot by a gunman who walked up, fired at them through a fence and fled.

Zuniga, 36, of Port Hueneme was struck in the head and died at the scene. De La Cerda, 29, of Oxnard died later at a local hospital from bullet wounds to the torso.

No arrests have been made in those cases.

On Friday, police announced the arrest Jose David Corral, 21, of Oxnard on suspicion of murder in the stabbing death Thursday of Joshua Mumford, 21, also of Oxnard.