UCSC protester mugshots: Havoc for Santa Cruz drivers due to UCSC protesters

On Tuesday, UC Santa Cruz protesters created havoc for drivers on Ocean Street and the Highway 1/Highway 17 interchange. NewsChannel 5 learned one of the detours sent traffic into a neighborhood near the Highway 1.

Officers said the students included Ethan Pezzow, 20, of Santa Cruz, Alexander Pearce, 20, of San Francisco, Sophia DiMatteo, 20, of Sherman Oaks, Jeanine Caceres, 22, of Santa Cruz, Lori Nixon, 29, of Santa Cruz, and Sasha Peterson, 20 of Santa Cruz.

A quiet neighborhood turned into a thoroughfare, as a protest unfolded on the highways in Santa Cruz. Drivers trying to avoid the traffic turned onto back roads like Plymouth Street.

“It’s just creating back up here, completely,” driver Julian Faras said.

Faras said she grew up on Plymouth St.

“What the protesters are doing, is increasing the danger for the residents here, because there’s lots of kids, there’s animals, and we don’t need this,” Faras said.

Only a concrete wall separated the neighborhood from the action.

“I was sitting in my office and you could hear this loud noise, and I looked out my window, and you could see this huge helicopter,” resident Evelyn Markasky said.

Stranded drivers stopped to see what was going on. Faras even brought out a ladder and stopped to talk to them about the cause of all of this.

“I don’t know what their message is today, apparently it’s a couple different things, but right now they’re just kind of upsetting people,” Faras.