Labh Nigah’s daughters said the case shaped their lives for more than a decade before prosecutors announced a murder charge.
OXNARD, Calif. — The daughters of Labh Nigah were teenagers when their father was stabbed to death after school drop-off in 2014, and adults when police said DNA testing finally led to an arrest.
The Ventura County District Attorney’s Office has charged Jose Antonio Jimenez, 32, with murder in Nigah’s death, moving a long-unsolved case from a cold-case file into court. Nigah, 55, was a husband, a father of three and a convenience store clerk who had immigrated from India. Officials said he had just walked his son to Sierra Linda Elementary School before he was attacked in Sierra Linda Park. The arrest brings the family into a new stage of a case that had no named suspect for more than 11 years.
For years, the public record of Nigah’s death began with a small piece of a weekday routine. He dropped off his son, went to the park next to the school and walked along a path near Indigo Place. Family members said he was focused on his children’s education and future. His daughters, Harleen Kaur and Arshneel Kaur, later described him as a father whose expectations still guide them. Harleen Kaur said he taught them to be “modest, humble and hardworking.” Arshneel Kaur said she still measures choices against the question of how she could make him proud.
That routine ended at about 8:43 a.m. on Nov. 13, 2014, when Oxnard police officers responded to Sierra Linda Park for a report of a battery victim. They found Nigah with multiple stab wounds on a walking path. Emergency workers tried lifesaving measures, but he died at the scene. An autopsy later confirmed the death was a homicide. Police said witnesses included people in the park and people connected to the nearby school. Students in the schoolyard also saw the attack, officials said, turning a morning near campus into a crime scene.
Oxnard Police Chief Jason Benites said the case stayed with officers because of where and how it happened. He said the killing occurred in daylight, in a public park and next to an elementary school that was in session. “Worst yet, grade-school students who were in the schoolyard also witnessed this,” Benites said. Officials said Nigah did not know the man now charged in the case. District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said investigators found no evidence that the defendant knew Nigah or that Nigah knew him. Authorities have described the attack as random.
Jimenez was 20 years old when Nigah was killed, authorities said. Prosecutors said he lived in Oxnard and was blocks from the neighborhood tied to the killing at the time. On April 2, detectives served an arrest warrant at an Oxnard residence and took him into custody without incident. Four days later, prosecutors announced that Jimenez had been charged with one count of murder. The filing also includes special allegations that he personally used a knife, that the killing involved great violence and that the victim was particularly vulnerable.
The arrest did not come from a single eyewitness account made public this year. Officials said it came from years of preserving and retesting evidence. Detectives collected DNA in 2014 and entered it into CODIS, the FBI’s national DNA database. No match was found then. Investigators continued to work the case through interviews, public appeals and forensic reviews. In recent years, new DNA technology and genetic genealogy gave detectives new paths to follow. Prosecutors said those methods led them to relatives of the suspect, including one in Houston and one in Ventura County.
The family’s reaction carried both relief and pain. Arshneel Kaur said she was in shock when she learned about the arrest. She said she was grateful for the work done by Oxnard police and others who kept the case alive. Harleen Kaur said the family had lived for years with the possibility that they might never know who killed their father. She said getting a name after so long felt stunning, but it also brought back the day her family was pulled into grief. Another daughter recalled being removed from school with her sister and placed in the back of a police car after the attack.
In the years without an arrest, the killing became part of the family’s life story. The daughters grew up without hearing their father say he was proud of them. They spoke of him as a worker and provider who lived for his children. Prosecutors used similar words, describing Nigah as hardworking and dedicated. Those details now sit beside the legal language of the case, which lists murder under California Penal Code section 187(a) and names Senior Deputy District Attorney Amber Lee as the prosecutor. The court case will decide the allegations against Jimenez.
Police also described the case as a test of evidence storage and patience. The DNA did not solve the case when it was first put into the federal system, but officials said proper storage meant it could be used again when science advanced. The Oxnard Police Department, Ventura County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit, Ventura County Crime Lab, FBI and District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigation all took part in the renewed work. Benites said advances in science and the determination to keep working old homicide cases made the arrest possible.
Jimenez appeared in court April 6, and his arraignment was continued to April 28. Prosecutors asked for a higher bail amount, and the court raised bail to $1 million. Jimenez remained in custody after that hearing. Officials have not announced a motive, and the case has not gone to trial. Nasarenko called the killing an ambush and said the filing cannot undo the harm caused to Nigah’s family. He said the arrest is an important step toward accountability.
The next hearing is scheduled for April 28 at 1:30 p.m. in courtroom 13 of Ventura County Superior Court. More than 11 years after Nigah died near his son’s school, the case now turns from investigation to prosecution.
Author note: Last updated 2026-04-28.