Four months after a group of men allegedly cornered a victim at gunpoint in a Petaluma parking lot, investigators say they finally cracked the case open — and what they found inside multiple residences last Wednesday included a ghost assault rifle, four other illegal handguns, narcotics, and a disassembled stolen vehicle. Four suspects, including a 17-year-old, now face a sprawling list of felony charges tied to both the original confrontation and the criminal enterprise investigators say grew around it.
The case began on April 7, when police say four suspects confronted a single victim in a parking lot in the 1000 block of Petaluma Boulevard North just after 1 PM, allegedly threatening him while displaying a handgun. According to the Petaluma Police Department, detectives spent months piecing together what happened by reviewing dispatch records, body-worn camera footage, witness statements, surveillance video, and automated license plate reader data before establishing probable cause that the suspects had acted together to locate, intimidate, and threaten the victim with a firearm.
That ALPR technology has only been in place since October 2025, when the department installed four fixed Flock Safety camera systems funded by a county emergency grant, according to the City of Petaluma. The cameras let officers cross-reference passing vehicles against criminal databases, a capability that reportedly helped detectives identify suspects tied to the April confrontation as the investigation dragged on. The rollout of that surveillance tool has also fueled ongoing community privacy debates even as it becomes a routine part of local police work.
Search Warrants Served Across Multiple Petaluma Locations
The investigation crossed a threshold last Wednesday, when Petaluma detectives served search warrants at multiple residences and locations around the city, according to the police department's report. Evidence gathered during the searches pointed toward suspected vehicle thefts, illegal firearm possession, negligent discharge of a firearm, conspiracy, criminal threats, and narcotics possession and sales — a far broader picture than the original April confrontation alone suggested.
Detectives did not go in alone. The raid drew support from the department's SWAT team, a K9 team, a drone team, and the Community Impact Response Team, a specialized unit created in July 2022 using voter-approved Measure U sales tax funds. Per Patch, that unit operates outside of routine call dispatch specifically so officers can focus on proactive investigations and high-priority crime hot spots, making it well-suited to the kind of multi-location operation Petaluma ran last week.
Ghost Guns, a Stolen Car, and a Long List of Charges
By the time the searches wrapped up, investigators had recovered five illegal firearms — a ghost assault rifle, two ghost handguns, and two additional handguns — along with a disassembled stolen vehicle. Four suspects were taken into custody and booked: 23-year-old Carlos Soto, 20-year-old Kevin Tovar, 19-year-old Matthew Delucca, and a 17-year-old juvenile whose name has not been released.
Tovar faces the heaviest charge sheet of the group, including criminal threats, false imprisonment, brandishing a firearm, and conspiracy, plus a stack of firearm and drug offenses. Among them are possession of a firearm with an altered or obliterated identification mark under Penal Code 23920(a), a statute that exists specifically because defaced serial numbers hinder police from tracing weapons used in violent crimes, according to FindLaw. He was also charged with possession of a firearm by a prohibited person following a juvenile adjudication and prohibited possession of a firearm until age 30 under Penal Code 29820, a law reinforced by Assembly Bill 383 in January to add firearm relinquishment deadlines, per the Law Office of Katie Walsh. Tovar additionally faces charges of possessing a large-capacity magazine and a controlled substance.
Co-Defendants Face Their Own Set of Charges
Delucca was charged with conspiracy and two counts of unlawful firearm transfer without a licensed dealer, a misdemeanor under Penal Code 27545 that carries up to a year in jail for off-the-books gun sales between private parties. Soto was charged with conspiracy and possession of a large-capacity magazine. The 17-year-old juvenile suspect faces charges of possessing a stolen vehicle, an assault weapon, and an unserialized firearm — the last two potentially carrying up to three years in state prison if prosecuted as felonies, according to Eisner Gorin LLP's analysis of Penal Code 30605(a).
Booking logs reviewed through City of Petaluma Open Data show that both Soto and Delucca had separate run-ins with local law enforcement along the same Petaluma Boulevard North corridor just days before the raid — Soto arrested on August 13 for trespassing and resisting an officer, and Delucca arrested on August 14 for minor alcohol possession and wrong-way driving. It's not clear from available records whether those earlier bookings were connected to the broader investigation or were coincidental encounters on the same stretch of road.
Ghost Guns Remain a Statewide Enforcement Target
The unserialized firearms recovered in Petaluma fit into a broader statewide pattern. California's Assembly Bill 1621, enacted in 2022 and effective the following year, bans the possession, sale, and manufacture of unserialized ghost guns and unfinished firearm parts under Penal Code 29180 — closing a loophole that once let buyers bypass background checks entirely, according to the Miranda Rights Law Firm. Even so, data released by the California Department of Justice in July showed statewide recoveries of untraceable ghost guns dropped for a fourth consecutive year in 2025, according to Everytown Research & Policy, despite continued multi-agency enforcement.
The disassembled stolen vehicle recovered in the raid also points toward the kind of chop-shop activity regional task forces have long targeted. The Sonoma County Auto Theft Task Force, a multi-agency coalition of local police, the CHP, and county prosecutors formed in 1998, coordinates jurisdictional investigations into stolen vehicle operations across the county, per Patch. How extensive the vehicle disassembly operation tied to this case was remains an open question.
Several other questions remain unresolved. Investigators have not said where the ghost assault rifle and ghost handguns originated, nor how far the alleged chop-shop activity extended. It's also unclear whether prosecutors will seek to charge the 17-year-old suspect as an adult. Petaluma police say the investigation remains ongoing and are asking anyone with information to come forward through the department's anonymous tip website, by texting PETPD followed by a message to 888777, by emailing [email protected], or by calling the non-emergency line at (707) 778-4373.
