Ventura County – Oxnard is a city known for many things: strawberry fields and festivals, its status as a transportation hub, its international port, a major U.S. Navy base, deep white sand beaches, Channel Islands Harbor, violent gangs, and an underground economy driven by illegal drug sales.
It’s this last distinction that is the apparent factor driving the events of the afternoon of Thursday, May 14th, when the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Narcotics Unit—who had been investigating the activities of Luis Arroyo, 35, an Oxnard resident suspected of being a retailer of controlled substances within the county—observed Arroyo as he walked out of his “A” Street residence and sauntered down the street toward Oxnard Boulevard, one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares. According to Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. Jose Rivera, when a Sheriff’s marked patrol unit attempted to make contact with Arroyo, he “fled from the deputies…and discarded a small baggie that contained several grams of methamphetamine and a large knife.”
Arroyo left his A Street apartment and was soon running from the police.
At that point, the chase was on, with Arroyo sprinting across the busy downtown street and making his way into a nearby residential neighborhood as he ignored the vocalized entreaties of his uniformed pursuers to stop and submit to arrest. Arroyo finally ran into the rear yard of a home where he was cornered by Deputies and “taken into custody without incident.”
Pursuant to Arroyo’s arrest, a search warrant for his residence was obtained and served. During that effort, Arroyo’s wife and “several minor children” were discovered, along with “a quarter pound of methamphetamine, firearms, ammunition, and evidence that Arroyo was actively involved in the sale of methamphetamine.”
Records show that Arroyo was arrested on June 21 of last year on domestic violence charges of inflicting corporal injury on a spouse or co-habitant.
Arroyo was transported to Ventura County Jail, where he was booked on charges of possession for sales of a controlled substance, possession of a firearm by a felon, possession of ammunition by a felon, child endangerment, attempted destruction of evidence, and resisting arrest, with his bail set at $200,000. No explanation was given as to the method Arroyo used to place a large knife in a small baggie.
