Photo: Image of suspects Jorge Garfias and Margarita Jiminez | Oxnard PD
It was just minutes before midnight on Sunday, March 17th when Oxnard Police Dispatch received a call for service reporting “a fight with possible gunshots,” according to the Oxnard Police Department spokesman Sgt. Jaime Miranda.
When uniformed patrol units rolled up to the reported scene at the parking lot of the All Star Auto Body shop and discovered 35-year-old Oxnard resident Yanelly Vargas Sandoval “unresponsive with a gunshot wound to the right side of her torso.” Emergency medical services were promptly summoned, but as Sandoval was being transported to Ventura County Medical Center, she succumbed to her wounds.
The immediately ensuing investigation indicated that Sandoval had been in a “romantic relationship” with 36-year-old Ventura resident Jorge Garfias. Homicide investigators have not determined whether or not a “former dating relationship was a factor” in the shooting, but evidence gathered by detectives following the incident pointed to Garfia and 33-year-old Oxnard resident Margarita Jiminez as responsible for the violence.
Both Jiminez—a felon with a prior conviction for assault with a firearm—and Garfia were contacted and taken into custody “without incident” on the morning of April 4thby members of the OPD Special Enforcement Unit and a K-9 team. They were then transported to Ventura County Jail, where they were booked on suspicion of murder with their bail set at $2 million each.
