Jonathan David Highley
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY — Perhaps subscribing to the principle that “love is blind” and that devotion to one’s spouse which it entails — even when that marital partner fatally shoots another — the husband and wife couple of Orcutt residents Jonathan David Highley,35, and Mayra Perez, 29, were arrested on March 4th and booked into Santa Barbara County Jail on assorted charges.
According to Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department Public Information Officer Kelly Hoover, the charges against Highley include “murder, preventing, or dissuading a witness by force or threat, assault with a firearm on a person, threatening a crime with intent to terrorize, and intentional discharge of a firearm in commitment of a felony causing death.”
Mayra Perez
For her part in the events leading to the death of 43-year-old Steven San Juan, Perez is charged on various “accessory” counts.
Things went bad for the happy couple when, in the early morning hours of March 4th, SBSD deputies “responded to calls of a man with a gun and a shooting” in the rear of Elmer’s Bar in Old Town Orcutt and discovered San Juan “dead at the scene with a fatal gunshot wound.”
Pursuant to that finding, witness reports sent detectives to a nearby residential area where the shooter had reportedly fled.
Several hours of surveillance in that neighborhood ended with deputies making contact with Highley and Perez, whereupon both were taken into custody and transported to Santa Barbara County Jail for booking on the aforementioned charges.
The couple’s four children were taken into custody by Santa Barbara County Child Protective Services, while Highley’s bail was reportedly set at $2,000,000 and his bride’s set at $500,000.
Photos: courtesy Santa Barbara County Jail booking
