Oxnard Ca

Seven-year-old Carla Reyes shut her eyes and grimaced when a nurse pricked her index finger to draw a small sample of blood. But her mother, Silvia Reyes, said the checkups Sunday afternoon were well worth the pain Carla and her two sisters endured during the Latino Health Fair at Del Sol Park in Oxnard's La Colonia district.

Police will begin notifying members of a south Oxnard gang that they can no longer hang out in public, wear certain clothing or drink alcohol under the terms of a second gang injunction approved this week. A Ventura County Superior Court judge Monday approved Dist. Atty. Gregory Totten's request for a 4.26-square-mile enforcement zone, roughly south of Wooley Road, east of Ventura Road, west of Rose Avenue and north of Hueneme Road. Deputy Dist. Atty.

A picture may be worth a thousand words but it's not worth 270 bucks, motorists here have decided. In the two years since cameras were installed at local traffic intersections, the number of red-light violations has dropped 42%, according to a study released Wednesday. The city had taken part in a nationwide experimental program in which motorists who ran red lights were caught on film and sent a $270 ticket by mail.

An Oxnard man who fatally stabbed a police dog last year during a confrontation with police was sentenced Thursday to four years in state prison. Timothy Knight, 21, pleaded guilty last month to exhibiting a deadly weapon to a police officer and harming or interfering with an officer's dog. Both charges are considered violent felonies and count as strikes on his record. Knight was wanted on an outstanding warrant on April 19, 2002, when Officer J.R.

An Amtrak train carrying 80 passengers hit a tractor trailer hauling frozen strawberries Monday, causing some minor injuries. Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner struck the truck about 4:30 p.m. at the rail crossing at 5th Street and Rose Avenue, said Fire Battalion Chief Chris Donabedian. He said the train did not derail and the guardrails and crossing lights were operating properly. The train originated in San Diego at noon and was headed to San Luis Obispo.

On a shabby edge of La Colonia, an inner-city island detached from the rest of Oxnard by the Southern Pacific rail line, the marketplace is alive and filling with buyers. Mothers guide strollers along broken sidewalks. Dark barrio barrooms and pool halls quickly become crowded, even though it is not yet noon. But in this most dangerous piece of La Colonia, the biggest business goes down on the street.

California Rural Legal Assistance and an Oxnard flower grower have settled an employment and wage dispute for $180,000, lawyers said Tuesday. Francisco Gomez, Jose de Jesus Martinez and Liborio Tapia alleged that Pleasant Valley Flowers did not properly pay overtime wages or provide meal and rest periods while they were employed there in 1999, 2000 and 2001.

Oxnard police are investigating the deaths of two men in separate shootings over the weekend. Oscar Rosendo Ponce, 33, was found in the alley of the 3000 block of South G Street about 12:30 a.m. Sunday with multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene. About 4:30 a.m. Monday, the body of a 20-year-old Oxnard resident was found in the alley of the 600 block of South E Street. He had been shot in the head.

When Tim Riley gazes out at the Santa Barbara Channel, he sees doomsday just over the horizon. An Oxnard attorney concerned about two proposals for offshore liquefied natural gas facilities, Riley runs an anti-LNG website with illustrations of his city being incinerated beneath a blanket of flame. "I started researching this stuff, and it horrified me," he said. "I don't want my community to be a potential Chernobyl."

Two Oxnard police officers who were patrolling the beach in an SUV ran over and killed a sunbather Monday, authorities said. The woman was identified late Monday as Cindy Conolly, 49, of Sioux City, Iowa. Mike Feiler, senior deputy medical examiner for the Ventura County coroner, said she was staying at the nearby Embassy Suites Mandalay Beach Resort with her fiance, who was at the hotel while she was sunbathing.