25-05-2025
Roundup: SWAT responds to firearm incident, Christmas crash in Simi area brings prison term
Here's a roundup of recent incidents and announcements from Ventura County agencies:
An Oxnard man was booked into jail May 24 on suspicion of multiple violent crimes in connection with a domestic violence incident involving a firearm, officers said.
Oxnard police said the 26-year-old man battered and threatened to kill his 29-year-old girlfriend on the evening of May 23, forcing her to leave a residence in the 900 block of East Channel Islands Boulevard and go to a hospital for treatment.
Cmdr. Scott Aaron said hospital staff alerted police. They interviewed the woman at the hospital and gave her a ruse she used on the phone to coax him out of the house, he said. The man had the couple's 3-month-old child with him, but turned the baby over unharmed to family members, Aaron said.
Officers said the man was in possession of a firearm but the department's SWAT team took him into custody without incident.
Police said they did not know the condition of the woman as of May 24, but that she had been released from the hospital.
The suspect was booked into the Ventura County Jail on multiple charges, according to a jail inmate listing. Included were kidnapping, domestic battery causing injury, assault with a deadly weapon, making criminal threats, child endangerment and being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition.
The man remained in the main jail in Ventura on the night of May 24 in lieu of $1 million bail.
He is due to appear in court May 28.
A Simi Valley man was sentenced May 20 to four years in prison in connection with the death of a passenger in a crash on Christmas Day 2022, the District Attorney's Office said.
The defendant identified as 40-year-old Michael Gordon Butler pled guilty on April 24 to one felony count of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, according to a news release issued by the DA's office. He received the low prison term for the offense and his driving privileges were suspended for three years, according to the court docket.
Butler and the 23-year-old passenger had been at a family gathering before leaving in a Corvette that Butler had recently purchased, according to the DA's office. The vehicle went off Santa Susana Pass Road and landed 200 feet down an embankment, the DA's office said.
Investigators with the California Highway Patrol reportedly determined Butler had been driving at a high rate of speed while impaired, lost control of the vehicle, and struck trees and the hillside during the fatal crash.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Roundup: SWAT responds to firearm incident, Christmas crash in Simi area brings prison term
