{"id":424207,"date":"2026-08-05T05:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T05:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/424207\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T05:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T05:40:09","slug":"california-man-allegedly-crushed-womans-car-with-tractor-in-santa-maria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/424207\/","title":{"rendered":"California man allegedly crushed woman\u2019s car with tractor in Santa Maria"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A late-night argument in Southern California took a terrifying turn when an enraged man allegedly used a tractor to repeatedly crush a woman\u2019s car with her still inside.<\/p>\n<p>Levi P. Gaze, 38, allegedly rammed the vehicle multiple times with a front-loader tractor around 12:03 a.m. Saturday in the 1700 block of Sinton Road in Santa Maria, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sbsheriff.org\/deputies-arrest-suspect-for-crushing-vehicle-with-a-tractor\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The woman managed to escape the mangled vehicle without suffering serious injuries.<\/p>\n<p>A woman makes a death-defying escape from a car as a man smashes it with a tractor.<\/p>\n<p>Investigators said Gaze allegedly used the heavy machinery to settle the dispute before deputies arrived and safely \u201ccontacted Gaze while he was still in the front loader and took him into custody without incident,\u201d according to the sheriff\u2019s office.<\/p>\n<p>Gaze was booked into the Northern Branch Jail on felony charges of vandalism and assault with a deadly weapon. Jail records show he is being held without bail because of an outstanding warrant out of San Luis Obispo County.<\/p>\n<p>A woman makes a death-defying escape from a car as a man smashes it with a tractor in a fit of rage.<\/p>\n<p>The woman\u2019s car was destroyed by the 38-year-old Levi Gaze from Paso Robles.<\/p>\n<p>Most recently, a Florida man also allegedly used a tractor to destroy a car late July.<\/p>\n<p>A 52-year-old man named Johnny Paulk tried to ram the vehicle of a roadside crew and threatened to run over the workers after they flashed lights near his property. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe tried to kill us, the ground stopped his forks. He said he was going to flip our truck,\u201d one victim told an officer<a href=\"https:\/\/local12.com\/news\/nation-world\/tractor-roadside-worker-side-lights-flashing-threatened-safety-workers-property-too-close-vehicles-flip-flipping-flipped-confronted-threat-aggravated-assault-threatened-threaten-promise-kill-fork\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\"> according to LOCAL 12. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A late-night argument in Southern California took a terrifying turn when an enraged man allegedly used a tractor&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,283,14367,4182,14440,5875,3586,22919,7540,16220],"class_list":["post-424207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-car","tag-jail","tag-metro","tag-road-rage","tag-santa-barbara","tag-us-news","tag-vandalism","tag-victims","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}