Second teen convicted of premeditated murder in Oxnard church attack
A second teen was convicted in Davy Pichel’s killing after church video showed the boys walked away, then returned to keep beating him outside St. Anthony’s.
A 16-year-old Ventura County juvenile was found guilty of willful, deliberate and premeditated first-degree murder in the killing of Davy Glen Pichel, giving prosecutors a second conviction in the Oxnard church attack case. Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said the defendant was 14 at the time of the offense, and sentencing is set for July 13 at the Ventura County Juvenile Justice Center in Oxnard.
The conviction turned on church surveillance video, which prosecutors said showed the teens approaching Pichel as he sat near his wheelchair, beating and stomping him, walking away, and then returning to continue the assault. That sequence was central to the state’s premeditation theory and helped distinguish the case from a spontaneous fight or lesser assault charge.
Pichel was attacked on June 4, 2025, outside St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Oxnard and was found dead the next day by a church volunteer near the side entrance. Ventura County prosecutors said paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene around 6:40 a.m. The district attorney’s office said Pichel had significant injuries to his head and face and was partially unclothed when he was discovered. Prosecutors called the killing an “exceptionally brutal and senseless attack on a vulnerable member of our community.”
The second conviction materially changes the case’s legal endgame because the other co-defendant pleaded guilty in January 2026. With one teen admitting guilt and the other now convicted of premeditated murder, the prosecution has secured findings that both defendants were responsible for a deliberate killing, not a lesser offense. The minor now faces a maximum base term of seven years in a secured youth treatment facility.
The next procedural step is the July 13 sentencing hearing, where the juvenile court will determine the consequence for a case that began with a violent attack outside a church and moved, frame by frame, through video evidence that showed the assault stop, pause, and then resume.
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