Redway man arrested again in Ettersburg burglary investigation

A burglary-in-progress call in Ettersburg ended with another arrest for Jordan Marty Guthart of Redway, a repeat defendant whose name has surfaced in Humboldt County law enforcement records for years. Deputies arrested Guthart, 34, on May 8 after residents reported a burglary on French Ranch Road, and Sarah Marie Carroll of Eureka was also booked at the scene.

The latest case adds new allegations of possession of methamphetamine for sale, misdemeanor drug paraphernalia and controlled-substance charges, along with a felony enhancement for allegedly committing a new offense while out on bail. Carroll was booked on a probation violation and a pre-existing felony hit-and-run charge.

For Southern Humboldt, the arrest fits a pattern that has been building since 2020. In the Fort Seward case on May 23, 2020, deputies stopped Guthart on Redwood Drive near Evergreen Road in Redway and reported finding a burglary tool and more than $26,000 in cash. Three years later, on September 14, 2023, the Humboldt County Drug Task Force served a search warrant at a Redway residence on Manzanita Lane tied to Guthart, Laluna Martin and Kirk Thurston, and the county said agents seized fentanyl, methamphetamine and firearms. The case also involved a loaded handgun found in a bedroom where Guthart was living.

The arrests did not stop there. Jail reports show Guthart was booked again on March 18, 2026, on felony vandalism, attempted burglary and petty theft with a prior theft conviction. A March 24 booking added felony charges of maintaining a place for selling or using controlled substances and criminal conspiracy, in a case that also involved Martin. The May 8 Ettersburg arrest is now at least his fifth known arrest since 2020.

That chronology matters in Humboldt County, where more than 65,000 residents live in Arcata, Eureka and Fortuna and the rest are spread across rural communities that depend heavily on sheriff’s patrols and the county’s booking and records systems. The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office uploads jail reports daily, and the Records Unit serves as the county repository for criminal records, making repeat bookings especially visible in places like Redway and Ettersburg. A March 6 sheriff’s release documented another Ettersburg burglary-in-progress response on Wilder Ridge Road, underscoring how often the same remote roads are now appearing in the county’s crime log. Both Guthart and Carroll are presumed innocent, but the repeated arrests raise a hard question for Southern Humboldt: why have prior bookings, bail releases and earlier cases not prevented another alleged burglary response on French Ranch Road?