Officers search PCH in Ventura County for gunshot victim

Officers scoured the Ventura County coast Friday looking for a gunshot victim and arrested a 58-year-old Oxnard man for allegedly shooting the man, dumping his body along Pacific Coast Highway and attempting to elude police in an early morning chase.

The bizarre case began shortly after 2 a.m. Friday when CHP officers attempted to stop a pickup truck after the driver ran a stop sign near Camarillo Springs Road and Adohr Lane. A woman jumped out of the cab of the truck and ran to officers screaming for help, said Eric Buschow, a Ventura County sheriff’s detective.

The driver, later identified as Maximo Tamayo-Flores, fled in the truck and was captured after he crashed in an agricultural field.

Meanwhile, the woman told officers that Tamayo-Flores had shot a male passenger and dumped his body somewhere along Pacific Coast Highway, Buschow said, adding that evidence that corroborated the woman’s account was found in the cab of the pickup truck.

Buschow declined to comment on the evidence found or the relationship among the three parties, but said all three were in the truck consensually when the night began. Another police official previously said the woman and the gunshot victim were married.

The woman could not pinpoint where the victim was dumped, but after backtracking with the woman, officers were able to narrow the search to a five-mile stretch between the county line and Point Mugu Rock. Search and rescue crews, two tracking dogs and a helicopter team continued the search late Friday.

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seema.mehta@latimes.com