2 Robbers Sought in Home Invasion

Ventura police were searching Friday for two men who Maced and beat an elderly man after he answered his door on a quiet residential street near Ventura College.

Jack Jamar, 75, was sprayed with Mace and his lip was bloodied about 8:30 p.m. Thursday at his home on the 4300 block of Varsity Street by the robbers, described as Latino men in their 20s, said Lt. Roger Nustad, a watch commander for the Ventura Police Department.

Jamar was treated at his home by paramedics, Nustad said.

Home-invasion-style robberies are unusual for Ventura “but not unheard of,” he said.

In the last year, robbers posing as police officers have invaded homes in Simi Valley and Oxnard, and others have simply broken through front doors and held families at gunpoint before stealing cash and other valuables, police report.

On Thursday evening, Jamar answered the door and spoke briefly with the men before they sprayed him with Mace and forced their way into his home, Nustad said.

Jamar told neighbors after the robbery that he tried to fight off his attackers but that the pair overwhelmed him, stealing his Rolex watch and all the money in his home.

Jamar escaped out of the back of his home and went next door for help, according to the next-door neighbor, who did not want to be identified.

“He was quite shaken up and afraid,” she said. “I was really surprised that something like that could happen here. . . . We always thought it was very safe. That’s one of the reasons we bought our house in the first place.”

Neighbors said that Jamar, the former operator of an oil pumping company, had not left his house much since the death of his wife three years ago.

Jamar’s daughter, Jackie Maday, took her father to the hospital Friday. Neither she nor her father would discuss the incident.