Track Star Pleads Guilty to 2nd-Degree Murder

A former Ventura High School track star pleaded guilty Monday to charges that he stabbed an Oxnard youth to death.

Jesse Conchas, who turned 18 last month, hung his head as he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and use of a weapon in the fatal stabbing of Jose Lopez Navarro, 16, on May 3 in Ventura’s Camino Real Park.

As his family looked on, the slight teen-ager with a peach-fuzz mustache was led to Ventura County Jail to await sentencing, scheduled for Nov. 5.

“We entered the plea because if we went to trial, we probably would not get a better result than murder second degree and we could get a result of murder first degree,” defense attorney James M. Farley said afterward. “The tragedy of this is that Jesse was basically a good kid.”

By admitting that he committed second-degree murder, Conchas exposes himself to a maximum prison sentence of 16 years to life, the first seven years of which probably would be served in the California Youth Authority.

Although Conchas killed Navarro when he was 17, he was indicted on the murder charge as an adult by the Ventura County grand jury.

Conchas was a B-plus student and a two-letter varsity runner at Ventura High School whose work recruiting members into Ventura County Youth for Christ helped land his picture on the cover of a Christian brochure.

But Conchas was also hanging out with the Ventura Avenue Gangsters despite his parents’ protests. He carried a knife and kept a pistol and a sawed-off shotgun at his family’s home, witnesses testified.

It was Conchas’ fondness for his gang-affiliated friends that skewed an otherwise promising life, Farley said after the plea.

“It’s too easy for a kid to fall into this junk,” Farley said. “When you have lifelong friends you’ve been with since second grade and you get involved in bad behavior, it’s very hard to break away.”

Conchas planned to leave Ventura to join his brother, a doctoral student in Berkeley, at the end of the school year, Farley said.

But on May 3, Conchas and some of his friends spotted two youths--one of them Navarro--who they believed had smashed Conchas’ Volkswagen’s windows with a baseball bat several days earlier, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard E. Holmes.

The group surrounded the two and attacked them, and someone stabbed Navarro twice, Holmes told reporters after the plea was entered.

Navarro bolted down the hill, and Conchas gave chase.

“He chased him from behind, caught up with him and stabbed him in the back of the neck,” Holmes said. “That was the fatal wound. He was a track star at Ventura High School, and the other gentleman (Navarro) was somewhat portly, and that may have allowed (Conchas) to catch up to the victim.”

Conchas killed Navarro “in a moment of anger” because of the damage to his car, Farley said.

“He feels terrible about it,” Farley added. After deciding to enter the plea, “he and I just sat down with the probation officer and he tried to talk about the crime and he couldn’t talk because he was sobbing so bad. . . . He had a genuine sorrow for the victim and the family of the victim.”

Holmes said his office is seeking further evidence on the case that could allow prosecutors to file charges against any of Navarro’s other attackers.