DNA hit leads to arrest in 1990 Oxnard kidnapping case

A preserved sexual assault kit from a violent beachside attack in Oxnard has finally put Bobby Rollins Jr. in custody, turning a 36-year-old stranger crime into a fresh felony case. Ventura County prosecutors said the Long Beach resident was arrested on June 10, 2026, after DNA from evidence collected in 1990 produced a CODIS hit in a case that began with kidnapping, robbery and an alleged sexual assault.

Investigators say the victim was 18 when two men approached her at gunpoint near Ormond Beach in Oxnard, took her from her car, robbed her and forced her down an embankment. She managed to get back into her vehicle, drive away at a high rate of speed and then crashed into a light pole about half a mile away at the intersection of Perkins and Hueneme Road, where witnesses helped her before Oxnard police responded.

The sexual assault charge itself is now barred by the statute of limitations, but Rollins still faces kidnapping with intent to commit robbery, along with aggravating factors that include personal use of a firearm and allegations that the victim was particularly vulnerable. Prosecutors said he is scheduled for arraignment on June 12.

What broke the case was not a witness coming forward, but evidence that survived for decades. Ventura County officials said the victim’s kit was preserved, then revisited after funding from the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative helped push old evidence back through the system. Forensic analysts developed a male DNA profile, uploaded it into CODIS and got a match to Rollins, giving investigators a name where they had only a trail of physical evidence before.

The arrest lands as Ventura County is testing about 2,000 sexual assault kits, some of them decades old, in a backlog-reduction effort tied to the National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative. The federal program is meant to inventory, test and track previously unprocessed kits and to help provide resolution for victims. Justice Department data has shown how large that backlog has been nationwide, with grantees identifying more than 136,000 unsubmitted kits and testing more than 81,500 of them.

The case also remains open in one crucial way: police are still asking the public to help identify the second suspect. That keeps the 1990 attack from feeling like a closed chapter, even with Rollins now in custody, because the preserved kit solved one part of the crime but not the full pair of men who were there when the victim fought her way out of a gunpoint ambush.