VENTURA : Man Cleared in Death in Citizen’s Arrest

A former Ventura man who fatally shot a 23-year-old man in a Thompson Boulevard apartment house during a reported citizen’s arrest will not be charged, prosecutors announced Wednesday.

The decision marks the second time prosecutors have cleared Dean Soto of wrongdoing in connection with the August, 1993, death of James Vleck.

Soto was initially cleared in December of that year when prosecutors ruled that he had accidentally shot Vleck after Vleck lunged at Soto during the attempted arrest.

Soto had accused Vleck of sexually assaulting a roommate of Soto’s girlfriend, police said. Soto told police that Vleck lunged at him and tried to grab Soto’s handgun.

Prosecutors reopened the case last year, after a private investigator hired by Vleck’s mother raised questions about how the shooting took place. Among other things, the investigator discovered a witness who had not been interviewed by prosecutors during the first probe.

After the shooting, that witness had told police that Vleck lunged for Soto’s gun. But then he changed his story, telling the private investigator that Vleck was trying to move out of the line of fire when he was shot, prosecutors said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard C. Holmes, who released a 55-page report on the case Wednesday, said the witness is not reliable because he has changed his story on several occasions. He said prosecutors cannot go to court in the case with a witness who is susceptible to being impeached.

Holmes also said that Vleck had been acting erratically prior to the shooting and that an autopsy found a near-fatal amount of amphetamine and methamphetamine in his body. The drugs could have caused him to lunge for the weapon, he said.

Neither Soto nor his attorney could be reached for comment Wednesday. But Rebecca Ennis, Vleck’s mother, criticized Holmes’ findings. She said the case should have been taken before a grand jury.

“It’s outrageous,” Ennis said outside the Hall of Justice. “It’s blame-the-victim. My son can’t talk so somehow they are going to blame him. I prayed that they were going to come out with something new.”