The Santa Maria Police Department is investigating a stabbing homicide of a Nipomo man that occured in Santa Maria during the evening of Oct. 2.
According to the SMPD, police received a call at 8:41 p.m. to the 500 block of East Cox Lane in Santa Maria. Once they arrived, the SMPD found 42-year-old Anthony Arguijo bleeding from multiple stab wounds.
Arguijo was then transported to the Marian Regional Medical Center where he died.
A neighbor, an older woman who didn’t want to be identified, said she had seen Arguijo leaning against the garage of a nearby residence shortly before 7:45 p.m. She walked into her house and came back outside after hearing a “bunch of chaos” and saw the man bleeding on the grass. She estimates the stabbing must’ve happened shortly before 8 p.m.
A dark patch on the lawn in front of the home where the incident occurred marks the spot where Arguijo lay.
“It was terrible,” she told the Sun. She described witnessing another man who appeared to be applying pressure to the stab wounds in order to stop the bleeding until emergency responders arrived. “I just couldn’t believe it.”
A woman who answered the door of the residence where Arguijo was stabbed declined to speak with a Sun reporter, but mentioned it was her cousin who died.
Another neighbor—a woman who didn’t want to give her name—told the Sun she was interviewed by the police who told her that it may have been a “family thing,” she recalled.
The SMPD didn’t confirm these details with the Sun and police haven’t yet identified a suspect or a motive.
That neighbor said she recently moved from Arroyo Grande. She described the Santa Maria neighborhood as normally quiet and a good place to raise children. She told the Sun that her car insurance rates went up as much as $20 per month after moving to Santa Maria. When she inquired with her agent, she said it was because of the crime rate.
“It was like wow, really?” she told the Sun. “It’s weird to always hear sirens. We don’t get a lot of that in Arroyo Grande.”
A little more than two hours after Arguijo was stabbed, the SMPD received a report of another stabbing at the Motel 6 located at 1007 E. Main St.
It was determined that a hotel employee received non life-threatening injuries following a confrontation with a female adult who left the scene, the SMPD said.
Police are seeking assistance from the public in identifying the woman. Photos of the suspect were posted on the SMPD’s Twitter page at twitter.com/SMPDHQ.
Arguijo’s death marks the city’s ninth homicide of the year, not including the July 20 police-involved shooting of Javier Gaona, who was killed in a police standoff.
In 2015, Santa Maria experienced 13 homicides, nine of which SMPD Chief Ralph Martin attributes to gangs—including five related to the notorious MS-13 gang.
Martin also attributes four of the six killings in January to MS-13.
With as many as 1,000 gang members in town, according to Martin, local street gangs are undoubtedly a heavy presence in Santa Maria.
In March, the SMPD led Operation Matador that nabbed 17 suspected members of MS-13, who were all indicted by a Santa Barbara County criminal grand jury last July.
Not including the killings from January, Martin told the Sun that Santa Maria is on course for meeting its recent average of four homicides each year—which he added reflects the FBI’s 2014 national average of around four homicides per 100,000 people (a rate which declined by 1.2 percent from 2013).
“Could that change between now and then? Certainly,” Martin told the Sun, adding that the arrests of the suspected MS-13 members prevented even more killing. “We believe we interceded in preventing eight other people from being murdered.”
Martin described the killing of 23-year-old Bernardino Dejesus on July 4 and of Arguijo on Oct. 2 as “very active” investigations.
Anyone with information in either case is asked to call the detective’s bureau at 928-3781, Ext. 1276.
This article appears in Oct 6-13, 2016.