VENTURA, California – District Attorney Gregory D. Totten announced today that Tyler Ostertag (DOB 10/16/94), of Camarillo, was sentenced to 72 years to life in prison by Judge Derek Malan. In April 2019, Ostertag was convicted of second-degree murder with use of a knife and dissuading a witness.
On August 31, 2015, 16-year-old Daniel Morales was having lunch at a fast-food restaurant in Camarillo when Ostertag started a fight with a friend of Mr. Morales’s. After Ostertag lost the fight, he retrieved a knife from a vehicle parked 80 feet away. As he returned with the knife, Mr. Morales jumped in front of his friend. Ostertag stabbed Mr. Morales once in the heart and he died later that day. The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office investigated the case. Deputies were able to apprehend Ostertag in Riverside approximately 11 hours after the murder.
The Ventura County District Attorney’s Office is the public prosecutor for the county’s 850,000 residents. The office employs approximately 280 employees including attorneys, investigators, victim advocates, and other professional support staff who strive to seek justice, ensure public safety, and protect the rights of crime victims.
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After seeing such a harsh sentence, I’m wondering why 28-year-old former audiologist, Bryn Spejcher, who stabbed her 26-year-old boyfriend to death by inflicting 108 stab wounds, hasn’t spent a day in jail and still walks free. She is a Thousand Oaks resident, she had had some alcohol, smoked some marijuana and heard voices.
Although it appears racial justice to have been served, it is far behind the racial Injustice practiced by Ventura County District Attorney when he refused to prosecute the Oxnard Police
Department murderers who shot and killed Alfonso Limon, an innocent pedestrian who, witnesses say, pleaded for his life with his hands lifted high above his head. White man’s racism is not minimized by one just sentence when our district attorney, of all people, imposes Ku Klux Klan justice to a young Hispanic resident a few yards from his home. Alfonso Limon was a victim of Racial Identity in that Oxnard officers, some of them Hispanic fired upon him without good reason. This was a clear act of racism acted upon by Hispanic officers as well as non-Hispanic under the direction of a female racist police chief, herself, African American.
The application of racism cannot be denied nor can it’s perpetuation at the hands of a racist Ventura County District Attorney. This was a blatant display of racism out of the office of the district attorney. The fact the act was not charged as a crime is indication of acceptance of racist law enforcement.