Teen Gets 7 Years for Knifing Man to Death

An 18-year-old Mira Monte man has been sentenced to seven years in prison for fatally stabbing an Oxnard resident during a fight over a Dallas Cowboys jacket.

Jose Lopez Lara pleaded guilty in September to stabbing 21-year-old Bobby Ferrer once in the chest with a folding knife in the driveway of a Meiners Oaks home two months earlier.

Authorities said Ferrer went to the house looking for whoever had ripped his Cowboys jacket during a party the day before. Outside the home, Ferrer got into a fight over the jacket with Lara, who pulled a knife and stabbed him.

The fight occurred in front of the victim’s 19-year-old fiancee, Melissa Reyes, whose parents lived nearby. Reyes cried for help and a neighbor called police. When authorities arrived, Lara surrendered.

Paramedics rushed Ferrer, who had two children, ages 6 and 1, to Ojai Community Hospital, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Lara was charged with a single count of voluntary manslaughter. On Tuesday, Judge Bruce Clark sentenced the defendant to six years in prison for that offense plus an additional year for using a deadly weapon during the fight.