Police records confirm federal agents provided false statements during violent October encounter
By: -----
Oxnard, CA - Oxnard Police have released documents about its response to a violent incident involving federal agents in October that reveal federal agents provided multiple accounts of the interaction that do not match videos from the scene and accounts of what happened.
The newly released documents detail the accounts of two officers with the Oxnard Police Department, Officer Wood and Officer Flannery, who responded to the scene and the documents were released in compliance with a request filed by Your News Channel through the California Public Records Request Act.
According to the partially redacted documents listed as "ASSIST OTHER AGENCY DEPARTMENT" type of incident in both accounts, officers were dispatched to the area of Mountain Avenue and Pacific Avenue for a road rage incident around 7:48 a.m. on Oct. 16, 2025.
The response was triggered by an uninvolved person who reported that there was a silver Jeep ramming a black truck and the caller lost sight of the vehicles as they continued westbound on Mountain View shared Officer Wood's account.
The caller did not know who was driving either vehicle, added Officer Wood.
At 7:59 a.m., a Ventura County dispatcher received a call from a person who stated they were an agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and that they were pursuing a gray Nissan Frontier after it had collided with their silver Jeep Cherokee in the area of 255 West Fifth Street detailed Officer Wood's account.
The self-identified federal agent stated that the driver of the Nissan was causing an ongoing, "safety incident" and requested local law enforcement respond to the scene.
Officers Flannery and Espinosa with the Oxnard Police Department were working in a two-man unit in a marked patrol car when they were sent to the scene of the reported hit-and-run around 7:59 a.m. noted Officer Flannery's account.
The duo conducted a traffic stop on the involved truck and the driver, later identified as Leo Martinez of Oxnard, pulled over into a dirt parking lot near the intersection of Eighth Street and A Street where he cooperated with investigating police officers, explained Officer Wood.
Officer Wood stated that he arrived at the scene to find the stopped truck, spotted his fellow Oxnard Police officers, and saw the involved silver Jeep which was parked adjacent to the responding officer's patrol vehicle.
The arriving officer noted major front end damage to the silver Jeep, asked that the occupants -who identified themselves as federal agents- to move their vehicle away from the other party, and informed all law enforcement personnel that he would be managing the investigation into the incident.
Officers interviewed Martinez and the agents at the scene as they conducted their investigation.
Martinez shared that he was recording the agents when they became aggressive and began to closely follow him as he made a series of U-turns before they agent's vehicle rammed into him.
An unnamed federal agent, who told officers at the scene he was the one driving the silver Jeep, reported to Officer Flannery that agents had attempted to initiate contact with Martinez by positioning their vehicle behind Martinez's truck.
The agent then claimed Martinez had begun to drive away before coming to an abrupt stop and reversing into the agent's vehicle, stated Officer Flannery.
According to Officer Flannery's account, the agent then claimed that both vehicles began to pull forward, and before he could activate the vehicle's emergency lights to conduct a traffic stop, Martinez suddenly made, "a quick sharp turn to the left, directly in front of the agent's path, and he [the agent driving the Jeep] was unable to stop in time to avoid a collision."
The video shows a demonstrably different interaction between the vehicles.
After his release and, he shared footage from inside his truck that captured elements of the incident that do not match the accounts provided to Ventura County dispatchers and Oxnard Police officers by federal agents.
The footage captured that the initial collision between the vehicles did not involve Martinez reversing into the agent's vehicle and showed the second collision was not caused by an aggressive turn into the path of federal agents, but instead appears to show the opposite.
The images below showed the sequence of the second collision from another angle that directly refutes the accounts from federal agents and match what Martinez said and footage from his truck.
According to Officer Wood, he overheard federal officers speaking with the U.S. Attorney's Office at the scene while they awaited the arrival of a supervisor.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California declined to confirm the call was made as well as the content of the call when reached for comment.
A supervising ICE agent who identified themselves as "Agent Aspirin" arrived at the scene, advised Oxnard Police officers that they would be taking Martinez into custody, and that federal authorities would be taking over the investigation into the incident detailed Officer Wood.
"At this point, we're still trying to sort through right now, we're just assisting them with maintaining peace at the scene," stated the Oxnard Police Department in a statement on Oct. 16, 2025. "The DHS [Department of Homeland Security] officials will be conducting the investigation. We don't have any further information We're not taking an active role in this incident. It's going to be investigated by DHS."
Martinez was eventually taken to Las Robles Medical Center before being taken to a federal detention facility in Los Angeles where he was released around 3 p.m. the same day.
He was told he had pending charges by federal authorities prior to his release.