Photo: Image weapon collected during arrest| Oxnard PD
If one could find a book entitled “How to Outrun the Cops in a Stolen Car” either on Amazon.com or in the stacks of bargain closeouts at a local bookstore, we might surmise that the opening chapter might be entitled “Know Where You’re Going.”
Apparently that information was never part of 23-year-old Oxnard resident Juan Manuel Rivera’s reading list, based upon the events leading to his November 28th arrest. If he had known where he was going as he careened through the streets of the City of Oxnard in a stolen Honda, he might not have made a turn into a dead-end residential cul-de-sac.
According to Oxnard Police Department Patrol Watch Commander Steve Trickle, once Rivera made that tactical error with uniformed OPD officers attached to the Ventura County Auto Theft Task Force hot on his tail in “a short pursuit,” he and his fellow passengers—Ventura residents John Nickolous Delarosa, 19, Josue Ortiz-Chavez, 21, and Fernando Ocampo, 22—abruptly alighted from the hot car and attempted to evade contact with their pursuers by fleeing the scene “on foot.”
Neither of the four suspects managed to evade the cops and were promptly taken into custody. The immediately ensuing search of the stolen Honda led to the discovery of “a loaded AR-15 style 9mm pistol,” at which point Rivera, Ocampo, Ortiz-Chavez, and Delarosa—each of whom was on parole for “a previous firearms-related offense”—were transported to Ventura County Jail. Both Ocampo and Ortiz-Chavez had outstanding arrest warrants, and like their two compatriots, are “documented criminal street gang members” and remain in custody on a no-bail hold.
