Those who know Calvin Sharp as a friend and co-worker seem least able to explain what might have happened on the night of Aug. 12 in Newbury Park, when, witnesses say, the 27-year-old taxi driver chased and killed 6-year-old Sev'n Molina with a meat cleaver.

"It's not the person I know," said Tim Rhodes, a nightclub manager and soon-to-be law school graduate who met Sharp when the two played basketball together at Newbury Park High School in the 1990s. "My heart goes out to (Sev'n's) family. In my humble opinion, though, that was not Calvin."

Sharp is scheduled to be arraigned today on charges of murdering Sev'n; nearly killing his mother, Sandra Ruiz, 33, a former girlfriend; and injuring a woman who tried to stop the attack.

Ruiz, who was critically injured trying to save her son, was released from the hospital last week. Her family has asked that she not be disturbed.

Also injured was Dianne Cox, a 53-year-old neighbor who ended the attack by tackling Sharp, a boyish-looking man about 5-foot-8 with a slim build, and wrestling him to the ground.

Cox has also declined to talk about the crime, which has shocked the community.

Sharp's friends said he was a hardworking father, who was devoted to his two young sons and loyal to his friends.

"Calvin has always been a great person. What happened is inexplicable. A life was taken away," said one man, who has played hip-hop music with Sharp. "I don't have anything else to say."

Postponement possible

Deputy District Attorney Maeve Fox said there is a good chance Sharp's arraignment will be postponed to give prosecutors and Sharp's defense attorneys more time to review the case. Investigators have yet to complete their reports, said Sharp's attorney, Howard Asher, a chief deputy public defender.

Fox would not say whether District Attorney Greg Totten is considering the death penalty.

Killing a child is not included as a "special circumstance," which would make a defendant eligible for the death penalty under California law, but there are possible "special allegations" that might elevate the case to that level.

Totten's office has a fairly rigorous process in deciding whether to pursue the death penalty, including a biographical work-up of the defendant, an internal review by members of his staff and consulting with defense attorneys. But ultimately the decision is Totten's.

Looking for a reason

Meanwhile, many people in the Conejo Valley, where Sharp has lived since he was 16, are trying to figure out what would trigger such a violent crime.

"It's something so horrible that people naturally look for a reason," said Dr. Randolph Nutter, a criminal psychologist who formerly worked with the Ventura County Sheriff's Department but is now in private practice in Ventura.

In a short interview at the county jail, Sharp was at a loss to explain it.

"I'm just trying to figure out what happened," he told The Star more than a week ago.

It is fairly rare for a man to kill a young boy, according to national data on homicides. Children under 14 have the lowest rates of homicide among all age groups, according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics. In most cases where a child is the victim of a homicide, the child dies at the hands of a parent. In about 20 percent of the child homicides from 1976 to 2005, the victim died at the hands of an adult friend or acquaintance.

A few of Sharp's friends said they thought Sharp, who, witnesses said, yelled, "die, die, die" during the attack, must have had some sort of psychotic break. Some wondered if he might have been under the influence of drugs. Toxicology tests have not been completed, but law enforcement sources told The Star that they have reason to doubt Sharp was under the influence.

Witnesses believe otherwise.

Erratic, bizarre conduct

One of Ruiz's neighbors said he saw Sharp smoking something in his van before the attack. Others described his behavior that night as erratic and bizarre.

"I think the job was taking a toll on him," said a 29-year-old friend who worked with Sharp for several years at Costco.

She suspected drugs were affecting his behavior, making him more agitated and sometimes angry. At one point, she suggested that he seek help. In April, she cut off communication with him.

"The last time we talked, it ended in a fight," said the woman, who, like others, asked not to be named out of fear of receiving the kind of backlash directed at others who have spoken in support of Sharp. The Star agreed to grant her and others anonymity after checking their statements against other sources.

The woman and her boyfriend, also a good friend of Sharp's, have gone back over the last few months trying to remember any changes in his behavior.

"On my birthday in May, he text messaged me and said he was sorry, but I didn't ever call him back," she said.

Then at the end of July, Sharp called and left her a message saying "he hoped I was doing all right."

The woman again didn't call back.

"I'm just depressed," she said. "A ton of his friends are all shocked and sickened by what happened. The first thing I thought when I heard the news was that he lost his mind to drugs. That's the truth."

Sharp made no secret of his fondness for marijuana — a picture on his Myspace page shows him smoking what appears to be a joint and "C.A. All Day" in a caption next to his name. "C.A. All Day" appears to be a reference to the Anaheim-based company called "Chronic Avengers," which sells pot-themed T-shirts and graphic comics, according to the company's Web site.

Although heavy use of cocaine or amphetamines can induce psychotic disorders, marijuana has not been shown to result in such behavior, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

No past criminal record

He does not appear to have had either a history of violence or mental problems. Court records show he had a handful of traffic violations but no criminal record.

But neighbors suspect he might have been behind a disturbance in March at the home he shared with the mother of his two boys on Blackwood Street in Newbury Park. A police report shows about $3,000 in damage was done to the home and some property was stolen.

Ventura County Sheriff's Department spokesman Capt. Jerry Hernandez declined to comment on the incident, but neighbors said they saw windows and a big screen television broken.

After the disturbance, his longtime companion took the children out of the local elementary school and moved out of the house, according to sources at Banyan Elementary.

Sharp later moved into the Motel 6 in Thousand Oaks.

Friendship turned violent

Though most people contacted for this report were stunned Sharp was accused of such a violent crime, a few others weren't surprised.

Nick Lemmo, 27, a former high school friend, said he's seen Sharp's violent side.

Their friendship ended violently right after high school graduation, said Lemmo, who has seen Sharp only a few times in the years since.

Lemmo said he mentioned to Sharp's high school girlfriend — who later became the mother of his two boys — that he'd seen Sharp with another woman. After the girlfriend confronted Sharp, Lemmo said, Sharp came after him.

"He flipped," said Lemmo.

Lemmo described how he was driving on Wendy Drive when Sharp pulled up in another car and tried to run him off the road. Lemmo pulled over, and the two got into a fist fight.

At a salon where Sharp got his hair braided into cornrows, the owner said he sometimes acted strange and gave her an uncomfortable vibe.

But most of his friends think Sharp was anything but off-putting.

"He was the kind of friend who you could just call if you needed help," said Rhodes, his former high school basketball teammate.

The two later reconnected when Rhodes managed the bar and worked the door at the Thousand Oaks nightclub Chapter 8.

Rhodes, who now manages the upscale nightclub Hush in Ventura, said he never saw a violent side of his friend. He also didn't see any signs that Sharp used drugs.

"In my job, I see a lot and notice that sort of thing," he said. "I didn't see that with Calvin."

Voted the friendliest student in the Newbury Park High School Class of 1997, Sharp never married his high school sweetheart, but friends considered them and the boys a family until recently.

After high school, Sharp studied briefly at Moorpark College. He later started driving a delivery van at night, in part so that he could trade off watching the boys with their mother, who worked days.

He drove a cab until about two years ago, when he started providing a private taxi service almost exclusively for Chapter 8 and P6, another nightclub in Thousand Oaks.

Sharp was a hard worker and responsible, said Rhodes, who recalled him standing up to a man who was trying to fight a club owner in the parking lot.

"He wasn't being violent, just calm and assertive, and he was able to stop the fight from happening," Rhodes remembered.

Sharp was an active parent who was very involved in his children's lives, according to the teachers who oversaw his boys in preschool and elementary school.

"He loved his kids," said Rhodes. "He was always flashing their pictures."

Last summer, when he began working in Ventura, Rhodes saw Sharp less frequently, but hung out with him one night a few weeks before Aug. 12.

"He was upbeat, positive talking about his kids," said Rhodes. "I definitely didn't see anything that would have raised concerns."

— Star staff writer Adam Foxman contributed to this report.