Robbery. Carjacking. Assault with a deadly weapon. Brandishing a firearm. Several outstanding felony warrants were stacked against Victor Manuel Ayala Sanchez on the day of his arrest in Santa Maria
Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office deputies took the 30-year-old into custody in mid-August after a four-hour standoff outside of Sanchez’s residence on East Sunset Avenue.
A crisis negotiation team and K9 unit were among the department’s resources that assisted deputies with evacuating other occupants of the house, including a child, and verbally calling out to Sanchez to surrender. They eventually found him hiding in his attic.
Unlike some past instances of Santa Barbara County’s apprehension of individuals wanted for outstanding warrants, Sanchez’s arrest wasn’t by chance, 5th District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino said.
“We’re being way more proactive and … not just hoping and praying that we run into somebody,” Lavagnino told the Sun. “Now we have somebody actively going after these folks.”
Lavagnino was referring to the Sheriff’s Office’s new felony fugitive detective, whose role is to help clear the county’s backlog of outstanding warrants, starting with a total of 400 for violent crimes. The county’s current total for all outstanding felony warrants is about 2,000.
Setting clear goals for shortening that tally in order of most violent crimes to less serious offenses marks a positive step forward for local law enforcement, said Lavagnino, who’s lobbied for reform within the county’s handling of outstanding warrants for nearly two years.
“Let’s focus on the people we should be focusing on, and that is the most dangerous, first. It’s pretty easy to work the list like that because you start off with the most heinous crimes and work your way down,” Lavagnino said. “Through this process, we figured out we’re not chasing 1,800, we’re chasing 400.”
In June, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors voted to essentially swap out one of the Sheriff’s Office’s past prioritized tasks—enforcing against illegal cannabis grows—for an increased effort to reduce outstanding felony warrants.
The board’s unanimous vote disbanded the Sheriff’s Office Cannabis Compliance Team and transferred its members to different units. One transferred deputy became the new felony warrant detective, part of the Special Investigations Bureau.
Since the role’s creation five months ago, the assigned detective has spearheaded multiple investigations into outstanding felony warrants, including the one that led to the Santa Maria standoff in August, Sheriff’s Office Cmdr. Erik Raney told the Sun via email.
Sanchez was among six “high-profile targets” the detective investigated so far, using surveillance and other resources to help pinpoint suspects’ locations.
“Several are still active investigations with the wanted persons still outstanding,” Raney said. “Several of the others led to the arrest of the wanted subject.”
Raney did not specify to the Sun how many of the six identified targets, aside from Sanchez, had been apprehended by authorities to date.
Lavagnino said he’s also hoping to hear more specifics about the warrant detective’s pursuits in the future via quarterly updates to the Board of Supervisors. The first of these reports took place during the board’s Dec. 9 meeting.
“That’s what I want to hear more about. I want to get into the details. I don’t want to know the person’s name and all that kind of stuff. But, ‘Hey, what happened? What was the outcome? … What exactly is going on?’” Lavagnino told the Sun. “Hopefully in our next update we can include more of those types of details.”
During the Dec. 9 update, Raney told the board that the Sheriff’s Office warrant detective often acquires separate warrants for cellphone data, bank records, and other resources, combined with taking part in surveillance tactics, to help track down a suspect’s whereabouts.
“In the first quarter we conducted six of these types of operations,” Raney told the board. “His sole focus is on locating and coordinating the apprehension of the most serious and violent offenders who are actively working to avoid the criminal justice system.
“And while that detective does go out and take part in apprehensions,” Raney continued, “he’s not solely going out as a solo deputy knocking on doors and putting handcuffs on individuals. Once his investigation reveals the location of a wanted subject, he’s coordinating with the appropriate resources to get that person into custody.”
Another form of coordination county officials discussed during the update was aimed at reducing the backlog of outstanding misdemeanor warrants, through what county Assistant District Attorney Kelly Duncan described as a “robust warrant purge process.”
“We’ve decided to take a look at all of the 9,000-plus warrants and identify those less serious cases for which we could seek batch dismissal of,” Duncan told the board. “Our first round, we focused on all vehicle code violations that did not include any alcohol or impaired driving offenses. Our first batch submitted to the court included 272 warrants for dismissal.”
While the District Attorney’s Office is working on additional batches to submit to the court, the first batch is awaiting final approval for dismissal, Duncan added.
Lavagnino told the Sun he believes the proposed batch dismissals will help the county better handle pursuing felony warrants in the long run.
“We’re not just getting everything expunged. We’re talking low-level stuff,” Lavagnino said about the misdemeanors up for possible dismissal. “And honestly that’s the stuff that’s cramming up the court system, and we’re spending less time actually adjudicating some of these serious offenses.”
He added that he feels “assured that we’re not wiping out anybody that’s committed a violent offense.”
“The more we get all that other stuff out of the way that is considered low-end,” he continued, “the more it provides us … plenty of time to focus on the violent offenders.”
Reach Senior Staff Writer Caleb Wiseblood at cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 18 – Dec 25, 2025.