In April, Westlake High School graduate Austin Eis, 25, the son of Indivisible Conejo co-founder Jennifer Stokely Eis, went on a violent, hour-long rampage that ended with the death of 15-year-old Wesley Welling. In July, district attorney Erik Nasarenko announced that an amended complaint had been filed and that Eis was being charged with first-degree murder for the unlawful killing of Welling.
“In light of the ongoing investigation, we have discovered new evidence to support additional charges and defendant’s premeditation,” said senior deputy district attorney Amber Lee, a member of the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office Major Crimes Homicides Unit, in a statement. “The amended complaint reflects that evidence.”
The amended complaint now charges Eis with 19 counts of attempted murder. Other previous charges remain unchanged. A follow-up investigation identified six additional students who were in the path of Eis’s vehicle.
According to the statement, on April 18, 2023, Eis is alleged to have entered a Simi Valley Walmart where he used pepper spray and stabbed one employee, physically assaulted and attempted to drag a second employee, and lunged at two additional employees with a knife. After leaving Walmart in a white Toyota Camry, Eis is alleged to have fled to his parents’ residence in Camarillo and forced his way inside the home. Police were called to the house, but Eis had already left in the car again and is accused of driving his vehicle to Thousand Oaks, where he intentionally targeted and struck high school students outside of Westlake High School. In addition to the injured and killed, several other students were narrowly missed by the car.
Eis is the son of left-wing activist group Indivisible Conejo’s Jennifer Stokely Eis and Mark Eis, who, according to LinkedIn profiles, is a senior IT manager at Amgen. Indivisible’s other co-founder is Jon Cummings, whose wife, Gwen Cummings, works at Amgen and strongly promotes the normalization of gender dysphoria.
Jennifer Stokely Eis is also an out-of-state director for the Northeast Arizona Native Democrats. In 2017, according to school board records, Jennifer was a vocal proponent of keeping literature in Conejo Valley schools, which many say is inappropriate for minors. The family has made no public statements regarding their son’s arrest.
Eis graduated from Westlake High School in 2017. Records show he competed in track meet events, including discus and shot put. He graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo last year. Sheriff’s deputies believe Eis was currently homeless and living out of his car.
Victim Wesley Welling was the son of Kelly Welling and sister of Hannah, who, on the day of the crime, called to tell her mother that she and her brother had been in an accident. Hannah and Wesley had been waiting with other students for the bus that would pick them up after school across from Westlake High School on Thousand Oaks Blvd.
Kelly told ABC News, “I get the call from my daughter Hannah. There was an accident, and he was unconscious, and they were doing CPR, and they did CPR the whole way to the hospital. That is where he passed. By some miracle, my daughter wasn’t standing right next to him because it could have been both of them.”
The mother of three recalled her words to her son earlier that morning. “I said, ‘I’m proud of you. I love you. Have a good day,’ and that was the last thing I said to him.”
Suspected murderer Eis is being held in custody without bail and is being charged with the following:
PC 187(a) – First-degree murder
(19 counts) PC 664/187 – Attempted murder
PC 245(a)(1) – Assault with a deadly weapon
PC 22810(g)(1) – Use of tear gas
PC 459 – First-degree burglary
PC 459 – Second-degree burglary
PC 236 – False imprisonment
(5 counts) PC 417 – Exhibiting a deadly weapon
