Simi Valley had only one homicide in 2015 and none in 2014; four homicides occurred in the city in 2013.
Santa Paula had no homicides last year but three in 2014 and in 2013 six homicides.
The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office investigated five homicides last year, compared with three in 2014 and two in 2013. One of the 2015 shootings was an officer-involved incident in Camarillo when an apparently suicidal 21-year-old man rushed the officer with a knife, an altercation caught on video.
In March Oxnard also had a fatal officer-involved shooting, when a woman was shot inside her apartment after her boyfriend called police; the officer who responded said the woman — whose three children were in the home — came at him with a knife and he had to fire on her.
The Ventura County Medical Examiners Office classifies officer-involved shootings as homicides because they involve a death at the hands of another. Such shootings are independently investigated and reviewed by the District Attorney’s Office.
An unusual hit-and-run was deemed a 2015 homicide because Oxnard Police believe the 18-year-old male victim was intentionally hit in August by a vehicle. One other homicide in Oxnard resulted from the use of a blunt instrument and the balance of the homicides involved guns.