Man Pleads Guilty in Boy’s Death : Oxnard: A drive-by bottle attack prompted by gang rivalry preceded the fatal burst of gunfire, the public defender says.

An Oxnard man angered by drive-by rock-and-bottle attacks on his residence has pleaded guilty in the shooting death of a 17-year-old passenger in a pickup truck.

Angel O. Rodriguez Sr., 49, will be sentenced March 29 by Judge Charles R. McGrath of Ventura County Superior Court. He is being held in Ventura County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail.

Deputy Public Defender William D. Perryman said the bottle attacks that preceded Rodriguez’s burst of gunfire were prompted by his son’s gang membership. “It’s a case of the sins of the son being visited on the father,” Perryman said.

Police reports, court records and witnesses provided this account:

For several months last year, gang members drove by Rodriguez’s residence in Oxnard’s Lemonwood neighborhood hurling rocks and bottles, apparently in retaliation for his son’s involvement in a Lemonwood gang. Rodriguez and his wife, who slept in the living room of their home, had taken to lying on the floor for fear of being shot, Perryman said.

About 8:30 p.m. Nov. 23, someone slashed all four tires and broke a window on Rodriguez’s car.

A few hours later, 17-year-old Richard Rodriguez Jr., who is not related to Angel Rodriguez, was in the back yard of his residence in the Loma Flats area of Oxnard when a bottle came flying over the back fence, cutting his forearm and finger. The assailants then smashed the windshield and broke the antenna on a 1991 pickup truck owned by Richard’s father, Richard Rodriguez Sr.

It has not been determined whether the Loma Flats attack was prompted by the Lemonwood vandalism, but the injured teen-ager and his father, along with an uncle and another youth, piled into the damaged pickup and headed there, seeking revenge.

About midnight, Angel Rodriguez heard bottles smashing as a vehicle drove by, and he went out to investigate, armed with a .22-caliber rifle. “He didn’t expect them to make a second pass, but he took the rifle just in case,” Perryman said.

When the truck rounded the corner a second time, Angel Rodriguez fired four times, hitting Richard Rodriguez Jr. in the chest twice. “He didn’t know until the next morning that he had shot anyone,” Perryman said.

Detective Sgt. Denny Phillips of the Oxnard Police Department agreed that Rodriguez had not intended to hit anyone. “That’s the tragedy of the thing,” Phillips said. “He was the kind of father who stayed up waiting for his children to come home.”

Rodriguez, who had been charged with murder, pleaded guilty Friday to involuntary manslaughter and shooting at an occupied vehicle. He could get as much as 14 years and eight months in prison, Perryman said, but the attorney expects a more lenient sentence and hopes that the judge will consider probation.

“On the other hand,” Perryman acknowledged, “there’s a 17-year-old wiped out before he had a chance to do a lot of things.”

He said he strongly considered going to trial in the hope that a jury would agree that Rodriguez acted in self-defense.

“He told police it was a war zone,” Perryman said, “and he was fed up.”