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An arrest has been made in a case which set off a firestorm of national and international news pursuant to events that took place at a busy Thousand Oaks intersection on the afternoon of November 5th.
It was on that day that opposing public protest gatherings arising out of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks upon Israeli citizens erupted on the public streets. Far from “peaceful” as described in much of CNN’s coverage, the Thousand Oaks protests erupted in violence that resulted in the death of 69-year-old local resident Paul Kessler. According to Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Public Information Officer Captain Dean Worthy, Kessler was the victim of “a physical altercation” which ended with him falling to the ground and “suffering a head injury.”
The immediately ensuing investigation, conducted by the Thousand Oaks Investigations Bureau, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Major Crimes Bureau, the VCSD Forensic Services Bureau, and the Ventura County Medical Examiner’s Office, and which involved numerous witness reports during a period intense local and national media scrutiny, indicated that 50-year-old Moorpark resident Loay Abdelfattah Ainaji was the individual responsible for Kessler’s injury.
With that information in hand, early on the morning of November 16th, detectives contacted Ainaji at his Moorpark residence and took him into custody. He was transported to Ventura County Jail, where he is charged with involuntary manslaughter with his bail set at $1,000,000.
