A disgruntled former employee is accused of causing thousands of dollars in damages overnight Sunday in ransacking the offices and parking lot of a Santa Maria Univision affiliate, police said.
Santa Maria police Lt. Marc Schneider said officers responded at 3:30 a.m. Monday to a report of a suspicious vehicle spotted at Entravision, a local Spanish-language television station in the 1400 block of Fairway Drive.
Officers discovered Pablo Quiroz Jr., a 34-year-old Santa Maria man who used to work at Entravision, had broken the majority of the building’s windows and caused a significant amount of damage to computers and equipment in the offices, Schneider said.
Quiroz also allegedly drove one of the station’s vehicles, ramming it into another company vehicle in the adjacent parking lot. Police said Quiroz recounted and posted photos of the incident on a personal Twitter account.
Police weren’t sure when Quiroz had been let go and estimated the damages at tens of thousands of dollars.
Schneider said responding officers arrested Quiroz without incident on charges of commercial burglary and felony vandalism.
— Noozhawk staff writer Gina Potthoff can be reached at gpotthoff@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.