Ventura County – As retail shopping activity reaches its annual peak during the Holiday season, so do the nefarious activities of auto and residential burglars. And right behind all of this are the ongoing efforts of law enforcement agencies tasked with the prevention of those who would play the role of Christmas Grinch.
And, perhaps following recent patterns of retailers who leap into the Holiday mode the day after Halloween, burglary activity throughout Ventura County seems to get an earlier start every year. Pursuant to that trend, Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Special Crimes Unit, working closely with the Camarillo Police Department’s Special Enforcement Unit and Narcotics Unit got wind of the fact that Juan Castillo, 34, Michael Cantero, 30, and Esteban Oseguera, 25, all residents of Santa Paula, had been actively engaged in serial burglaries throughout the county.
According to VCSD spokesman Sgt. Bill Schierman, Cantero—a parolee who was out on bail pending adjudication of charges relating to narcotics violations—and Oseguera—also out on bail himself, had something of a colorful history of burglary activity. It was on December 8th that Oseguera was arrested when he was found to be driving a stolen car from which his two passengers had fled on foot when the vehicle was the subject of a traffic stop. Arresting officers on that occasion found “numerous items that had been stolen earlier in the morning from unlocked vehicles,” Shierman reported.
Then, with Christmas rapidly approaching, in the early morning pre-dawn hours of December 17th, Castillo and Cantero were driving away from Camarillo’s Spanish Hills residential area when they were pulled to the curb by VCSD task force units. A cursory search of their car revealed a loaded handgun, and property stolen from nearby unlocked vehicles as well as from cars from as far away as Ojai, Ventura, and Los Angeles. Cantero and Castillo—suspected of being responsible “for hundreds of vehicle thefts and stolen vehicles over the last six months”–were arrested on the scene and transported to Ventura County Jail where they were booked for auto burglary and weapons charges, with their bail set at $500,000 each.
Photos: Courtesy Ventura County Jail Booking
Read more:
EdHat: Serial Vehicle Burglars Arrested
VCSTAR: Santa Paula men accused of countywide theft ring
