Ojai Valley News Blog

Ventura County Medical Examiners workers do their job while Ventura County Sheriff’s deputies and crime investigators check for evidence on Sunday at the Meiners Oaks residence where Seth Scarminach was killed earlier that morning. Photo by Scott Wintermute

EDITOR’S NOTE: Comments on this report have been suspended because in the opinion of the OVN editorial staff, too many of them had become off-topic, inflammatory, rude, full of foul (deleted) language and insulting. We apologize to those who wrote sensitive and meaningful comments. We believe your opinions are important to our community. Letters to the editor are welcome.

 

By Daryl Kelley and Misty Volaski

A 16-year-old Chaparral High School student was stabbed to death at an unsupervised teen party early Sunday, and a 14-year-old Mira Monte resident was arrested that evening on suspicion of murder in what authorities described as a gang-related homicide.

In the Ojai Valley’s first slaying in 11 years, Seth Scarminach died in the driveway of a Meiners Oaks home from stab wounds to his neck and chest shortly before 2 a.m., authorities said.

Scarminach, a Meiners Oaks resident, had also been the victim of an armed robbery in Oak View earlier this year, police confirmed.

Sheriff’s investigators would not elaborate on why they described the killing as gang related except to say that the suspect was an associate of  an Ojai-based Latino gang.

Sheriff’s Capt. Chris Dunn, who serves as the Ojai police chief, said: “We believe it was gang related because the parties were gang associates, especially the suspect. I’m not sure the victim was associated with a gang.”

Youths who attended the party said Scarminach was wearing a red bandanna, which the Latino suspect apparently took as a white power symbol.

“Seth was a good guy: he never got mixed up with gangs,” said a friend who was at the party. “He did have a red bandanna on and the (Latino gang members) think that means white power in Meiners Oaks. The night before, they hit me up for wearing red.”

The friend said Scarminach did have a relative who is a member of the Demons, a motorcycle group with a presence in the Ojai Valley and the Avenue area of Ventura. “He did support his cousin,” the friend said.

Several other friends also said Scarminach was not a gang member or affiliated with a gang, but was, instead, a laid-back youth with many friends. He had been an independent study student at Chaparral and previously attended Nordhoff High School, school officials said.

In new developments in the case Tuesday, authorities said that a deputy sheriff who had been assigned to the Nordhoff High School campus until funding cuts two weeks ago would return temporarily as an emergency measure.

“She’ll be back today,” said Dunn on Tuesday. “But we know that it’s temporary unless the school district and the city work out funding issues.”

The police chief also said that town hall meetings that were being arranged for Wednesday and Thursday evenings had been postponed because tensions were easing around town.

“We’ve postponed them at the recommendation of the school district,” Dunn said. “There’s a feeling out there that things are starting to calm down so these meetings may be too soon.”

School officials attributed cooling off partially to counseling on the campus Monday and to a candlelight vigil in honor of Scarminach at Libbey Park on Monday night. About 200 people attended.

Authorities would not identify the suspect because he is a juvenile. But school officials said he is a student at Gateway, a county-run continuation high school in Ventura. He attended several Ojai-area schools before that, and had applied for admission to Nordhoff in the fall.

“I know him,” said Tim Baird, Ojai Unified School District superintendent. “He has been in and out of our system in previous years.”

It is the Ojai Valley News’ policy not to name a crime suspect under the age of 18 unless the suspect is charged as an adult.

Gabriel Arellano, a 21-year-old Oak View resident, was also arrested Sunday in connection with this case, but he is not a suspect in the stabbing, officials said. Arellano, who authorities say is associated with a local street gang, was released from jail Monday. They would not say what his role is in this case.

Although he is just 14, the Mira Monte murder suspect may be charged as an adult if prosecutors consider his crime heinous enough to warrant it.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Frawley said it was too early to say whether prosecutors will charge the youth as an adult. That would be a very rare move, but the Ventura County district attorney did charge a 14-year-old suspect as an adult for allegedly killing a gay Oxnard middle school student in class last year.

Frawley said that if the slaying was gang related that would be a factor in deciding whether to try the suspect as an adult, which could bring a much stiffer sentence upon conviction.

“We don’t have a single report yet, so it’s really premature,” Frawley said Monday. “But it would have to be a particularly heinous case” to charge a 14-year-old as an adult.

Frawley said the youth would not be charged with a crime immediately, but would remain in custody at the county’s juvenile detention center.

“We’re going to file charges, but that’s weeks away,” Frawley said Tuesday. “And the suspect is not going to get out of custody.”

Frawley would not elaborate, but suspects are sometimes held in custody without being immediately charged on a new crime if they have violated conditions of probation for a previous crime. Since the suspect in the Meiners Oaks slaying is a minor, Frawley could not comment on whether that is true in this case.

The Saturday night slaying was the first in the Ojai Valley since 14-year-old Kali Manley was abducted and murdered in 1998, police said. And it quickly resonated throughout the valley.

Friends of the victim migrated to the Ojai home of David Brownlow, whose son was a friend of Scarminach.

“They didn’t want to be alone today,” Brownlow said Sunday evening. He said he was particularly troubled by the senselessness of the killing — –that in peaceful Ojai a youth apparently can be killed for wearing the wrong color of clothing.

“It’s a new animal now,” he said. “This will change things for a lot of people. Perception is reality, and this color thing will change things for sure.”

At Nordhoff High School on Monday, many of Scarminach’s friends donned red shirts in honor of their friend, a move that did not please law enforcement because it could have been seen as taunting. School officials asked students not to wear red clothing on Tuesday.

“We brought in additional counselors at Chaparral, Nordhoff and Matilija (junior high),” said Baird. “Twenty-some students had spoken to counselors (by noon Monday).”

Sheriff’s deputies walked the campus. And extra patrol and undercover officers were deployed around the valley to keep things quiet. The county gang unit was in town gathering evidence, said Police Chief Dunn.

“We’ve had extra patrols,” Dunn said Monday. “You name it, we’ve had it up here. So far, it’s been quiet.”

Despite the weekend violence, Dunn said he didn’t think there had been an uptick in local gang-related violence, at least not in Ojai. The last such act was a stabbing on New Year’s Eve, he said.

He said he didn’t know if the earlier robbery of Scarminach had gang connotations.

Scarminach’s death also brought new comments about the need for the so-called Social Host Ordinance passed by the Ojai City Council, then the county Board of Supervisors, in 2006. The ordinance carries a fine of $1,000 for those who allows underage drinking of alcohol at their residence.

Thirty-three Ojai Valley residents had been cited by the end of March.

“This is a worst-case scenario that the Social Host Ordinance hopes to prevent,” said former Councilwoman Rae Hanstad, who pushed its adoption. “When teens and alcohol and social groups collide it is a clear and present danger in our community.”

The house where the slaying took place — on the 2400 block of Maricopa Highway near Fairview Road — was not one that had been cited. Nor have its occupants been ticketed this time, said Dunn. According to sheriff’s spokesman Capt. Ross Bonfiglio, alcohol and a small amount of marijuana was found at the Meiners Oaks party.

The party was staged from a granny flat, authorities said, while the mother of the teenage host slept in the main house.

“She was the one who came out and rendered first aid,” Dunn said.

According to witnesses, the stabbing occurred at the end of a long Saturday evening, during which the festivities moved from one house in Ojai to the Meiners Oaks residence where the violence occurred.

One witness, a Nordhoff senior, said the party was moved because uninvited Latino youths showed up and began to cause trouble. Then, Latino youths came to the second party house, the witness said.

Scarminach was outside having a cigarette when they arrived, said the witness.

A brawl started, he said. And when the fight area cleared he said he saw Scarminach “laying there covered in blood, blood everywhere.”

The party-goers panicked, and many took off, the witness said.

Then, someone yelled, “He’s not breathing,” the witness said.

Parents kept arriving to pick up their children.

After police officers arrived, some of their interviews with teenage witnesses were audible to an OVN reporter at the scene. They told investigators that two Latino youths came up to Scarminach and a fight began. They described a large knife wound to the victim’s throat and chest.

One close friend of Scarminach, a girl, kept saying: “I hate them! We all know who did it! I know where they live!”

But many of those who cared for the victim called for calm.

The Facebook site titled “R.I.P. Seth Scarminach” carried this message of peace:

“Though many of us are angry … no good will come from it if we just continue the violence. End the violence now, and be thankful for the life you have.”