Ventura Man, 20, Killed in Apparent Gang Shooting

Jose Pimentel, described by his proud family as a hard worker and a good son, was doing everything it took to move beyond the rough and gritty west Ventura streets of his birth.

The 20-year-old Ventura College student was working full time and had aspirations of one day becoming a police officer, his family said.

But Pimentel’s attempts to lift himself out of his working-class surroundings came to a violent end Tuesday night.

He was shot execution-style by an unknown assailant as he stood with his cousin and friends in front of his uncle’s Olive Street home, a block from the public housing unit he shared with his parents and two sisters. No one else was injured.

The shooting was the latest in a surge of gang-related assaults in Ventura and Oxnard since Monday night that have left two people dead and three injured and spurred police in both cities to investigate any possible connection. No arrests have been made.

Police said they have no suspects in Pimentel’s shooting, the first gang-related killing in the city since 1999. They said there is no evidence that the victim was a gang member or had gang ties.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Sgt. Brock Avery of the Ventura Police Department. “Why this person was chosen to be the victim we don’t know.”

Pimentel’s family and friends gathered Wednesday morning at his house and around the sidewalk where he was shot to retrace the events of the night before and to remember the thick-haired kid they called Sha-Na-Na.

“I was telling him, ‘Don’t leave us, you can’t leave us, Jose,’” said Pimentel’s cousin, Salvador Pimentel, 26, who narrowly missed being shot by the gunman. “We have had shootings before, but nothing directed at us.”

Witnesses said the gunman, with a shaved head and baggy clothes, approached Pimentel and his friends about 10:30 p.m. as they stood talking near a white wrought-iron fence. As the gunman approached the group, witnesses said, he fumbled in his right pants pocket before drawing a semiautomatic handgun.

He asked Pimentel and the others where they were from before firing at least eight shots, Salvador Pimentel said. As the group took cover, the gunman fled on foot but not before shouting his allegiance to a well-known Oxnard street gang, he said.

Manuel Pimentel, 22, another cousin, witnessed the shooting from an upstairs window. “He just froze when he saw everybody,” he said of the gunman. “Then he started shooting and everybody jumped back.”

The surge in violence in Oxnard and Ventura prompted Oxnard Police Chief Art Lopez to call a meeting of investigators Wednesday to discuss ways to stem the crime wave.

He said there is no indication that Pimentel’s shooting is related to two earlier attacks in Oxnard-- the fatal stabbing Monday of a 15-year-old boy and a shooting Tuesday afternoon that sent three youths to a hospital with leg wounds.

Nonetheless, Lopez said he invited Ventura police to the meeting because of references Pimentel’s shooter allegedly made regarding an Oxnard gang.

“There may be a connection, but we are not certain,” Lopez said.

According to friends, Pimentel’s large, close-knit family has worked hard to improve its west-side neighborhood, long plagued by gangs and drugs.

The home where Jose Pimentel was shot was purchased by his uncle six years ago. With help from the families of the three Pimentel brothers, the ramshackle house was renovated and transformed into a source of pride, said Mike Del Dosso, president of the Westside Community Council.

“This is very troubling because you have a nice family who are good people in the community,” said Del Dosso, who spent part of Wednesday morning scrubbing blood from the sidewalk. “You look at what we have tried to do to curtail crime in the area. And then this happens.”

A block away, family and friends crammed into the small single-story apartment where Jose Pimentel lived with his parents and sisters. They reminisced about their lost son and brother.

They talked about how Pimentel worked five days a week for a beer distributor in Goleta and spent the rest of his time working out at the gym, cheering the Lakers and taking classes at Ventura College.

Nothing gave him more pride than wearing his company’s striped uniform with a large red patch and logo stitched on the back and his name embroidered over the front pocket, said his sister, Norma Pimentel, 24.

Sometimes she would tease him about the big stripes on his uniform, but it never bothered him, she said.

“He would wear that uniform to the gym and would have lifted weights in it if he could have,” she said. “I will miss him. He was a great brother.”