No Charges Filed in Motel Slaying

Calling it a case of self-defense, officials with the Ventura County district attorney’s office have decided not to prosecute the men who were allegedly involved in the shooting death of a 20-year-old Ventura man in late October at the Motel 6 on Harbor Boulevard.

Supervising Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Holmes, who oversees the department’s major crimes division, said the men involved in the shooting death of Mark Walter Schultz apparently acted in self-defense.

“There will be no filing against the men,” Holmes said.

Schultz was shot and killed early on the morning of Oct. 24 after confronting several members of an Oxnard gang who were staying at the motel, officials said.

He went to the motel armed and in the company of several friends to take money and drugs from the men, who had allegedly robbed a friend of theirs, according to officials with the Ventura Police Department.

As Schultz, armed with a handgun, approached the doorway where the men stood, one of them shot him in the chest.

Schultz then staggered to a nearby McDonald’s restaurant, collapsing on the front lawn. He died about an hour later at Ventura County Medical Center.

Schultz was one of the city’s six homicide victims last year.