The driver convicted for a fatal DUI crash that killed a 24-year-old woman returned to Santa Barbara Superior Court on Friday and formalized her sentence for probation, which a visiting judge imposed over recommendations for a state prison term. 

Katelyn Fultz, 29, of Santa Barbara was driving on Highway 154 on May 1, 2025, when she crossed the double yellow lines into oncoming traffic and slammed head-on into another vehicle. 

The collision critically injured the other driver, Carly Howard, who was taken off life support several weeks later. It also caused major injuries to Fultz’s passenger. 

Fultz pleaded no contest to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, driving under the influence causing injury, and several enhancements.

The Probation Department and District Attorney’s Office recommended prison sentences. 

Howard’s parents and siblings made victim-impact statements to the court at the April 14 sentencing hearing, asking for justice.

Visiting Judge Brian Aronson sentenced her to a five-year probation term and 270 days in county jail. 

The family was shocked and hurt.

“We don’t want revenge, we don’t want anything like that; we just feel there needs to be consequences, real consequences, for taking someone’s life,” said Diane Howard, Carly’s mother, in an interview this week. 

“We know Carly’s life mattered, but in the eyes of the law, it really said Carly’s life didn’t matter. That really hurt.” 

The sentencing comes near the one-year anniversary of the crash and Howard’s death. Some family members traveled from Arkansas to speak in person at the April hearing. 

“That just kind of resurfaced all the trauma and reliving that day and that month, actually, it was the whole month of May. May 21 is her heaven day,” Diane Howard said. 

Hobby Howard, Carly’s father, said reading the statements meant the family was able to share their grief and their faith and talk about Carly. But it seemed like they didn’t matter in the end, he said. 

It felt like “the justice was for (Fultz), not for Carly or our family,” he said. 

Delayed Probation Order

Aronson’s decision to sentence Fultz to probation was so unexpected that the Santa Barbara County Probation Department didn’t have an order prepared at the April hearing. 

After the sentencing, “this court was advised that probation had not prepared the order,” Aronson said Friday.

He ordered probation to produce an order consistent with the terms and conditions he had described at the April hearing, and Friday’s follow-up hearing was scheduled. 

“I will reiterate that this sentence is over the People’s objection,” Senior Deputy District Attorney Carl Barnes said Friday. 

“The court is certainly aware this is contrary to the recommendation of probation and the argument by the People,” Aronson said. “We’ve fully litigated the issue of sentencing, so we are not going to re-litigate that today.” 

Fultz remains in jail custody serving a 270-day sentence and signed the five-year probation order at Friday’s hearing. 

Aronson also sentenced Fultz to a six-year suspended prison sentence and 250 hours of community service.

He said he hopes she can do something to “tell her story, tell Carly’s story as a way of educating perhaps younger people so that other people don’t find themselves in the same situation as Ms. Fultz.” 

Probation terms include not consuming or possessing alcohol, and state law means her privilege to drive is revoked for three years. 

Fultz did not have a driver’s license at the time of the collision. 

In court, Barnes gave Fultz the Watson advisement again, which indicates that people convicted of DUI can be charged with murder if they drive under the influence in the future and someone is killed.

“Do you understand that?” Barnes asked. 

“Yes,” Fultz said. 

“This is a lifetime prior,” he added. 

Barnes told Noozhawk that it’s rare for probation to recommend a prison sentence. It’s usually only in aggravated cases “and this certainly was,” he said.  

“Although she was, I guess, strictly speaking, eligible for probation, no one really saw it coming. We were all caught off guard in the courtroom.” 

When Aronson had explained his decision, he commented that Howard herself would have wanted this, Barnes said. 

“The only people who had met her were in the courtroom saying they want justice for her,” Barnes said. 

“He definitely cut her a break, I’m not going to say he didn’t,” defense attorney Josh Webb said of Aronson regarding Fultz’s sentence. 

Webb said Aronson gave Fultz “no margin for error really” with the six-year suspended prison sentence. “If she does anything remotely bad (while on probation), I imagine they’ll send her to prison,” he said. 

“But yes, he did give her the opportunity to prove him wrong.” 

Webb said Fultz pleaded open to the court because there had been no plea negotiations with the District Attorney’s Office, and no offers made. 

In that position, she could go to trial or plead no contest to all the charges, which is what she did, Webb said.

Howard Family 

Howard’s dream was to be an actress, her parents said. She had moved to Bakersfield with them during the pandemic. They relocated to Arkansas and she moved to Santa Barbara County a few years ago. 

Her parents recalled getting an alert from Howard’s phone the night of the crash, and talking to law enforcement officers and the hospital trauma team. They took a flight to Santa Barbara the next morning.

Carly Howard was in a coma at the hospital for weeks following the crash. 

“At first, it was like, OK, I’ll be her caretaker the rest of her life; that’s OK, if that’s what we’re to do, Lord, that’s what we’ll do,” Diane Howard said. “Then it became apparent she wasn’t going to recover.”

From here, she said, they’ll “figure out how to navigate our life without our daughter.” 

Howard’s older brother, Logan Howard, a Santa Ynez estate law attorney, attended Friday’s hearing on behalf of the family. 

Going forward, his goal is to pursue mandatory minimum prison sentences for DUI manslaughter convictions, he said. 

“It’s a new area for me, but I just thought, this is the only way I can help change,” he said. 

“The system is broken; the fact that this is a capability for her to not serve time is insane,” he said. “It’s insane.” 

DA Criticized Decision by Visiting Judge 

Aronson is not a Santa Barbara County Superior Court judge. He is a retired Sutter County judge who has been assigned to local court through the Judicial Council’s temporary assigned judges program. 

“Judge Aronson was one of the judges assigned to cover Judge (Von) Deroian’s calendar when the chief justice requested she sit on the Court of Appeals for two months,” said Angela Braun, Santa Barbara Superior Court executive officer. 

District Attorney John Savrnoch was “shocked” by the probation sentence for a fatal DUI case, and issued a statement to the public saying so. He also told Noozhawk at the time that he thought a local judge would not have made the same sentencing decision. 

“While we disagree with the sentence, it is within the judge’s discretion, and there is not a basis to appeal,” he said this week. 

Savrnoch noted that his office filed a preemptory challenge on the one day Aronson was covering a misdemeanor calendar in Santa Maria.

These are filed to disqualify someone, without having to show a reason, if you believe you cannot get a fair hearing or trial from that judicial officer.