The following story is the result of extensive interviews with law enforcement officials, assistant district attorney and court records. It contains graphic details that may be disturbing to some readers.
A Fremont man faces life in prison after becoming the terrorizing flashpoint between two separate criminal investigations.
Austin Combs, 28, was taken into custody Aug. 3 without incident at his girlfriend’s house in Boulder Creek. He had eluded Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Office deputies for two weeks.
Combs this week was charged with shooting a man in the face point blank with a small hand gun, sexual assault, kidnapping, and robbery.
Combs, a former high school student in San Lorenzo Valley, pleaded innocent to 21 charges against him during his arraignment before Superior Court Judge Stephen Siegel on Aug. 7.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m., Monday, Sept. 25. Combs is being held in the Santa Cruz County Jail lieu of $650,000 bail.
The most serious accusation against Combs, who says on his Facebook page that he is the father of a young daughter, is the kidnapping-robbery-rape accusation by a former girlfriend, which carries a possible sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole, according to Jason Gill, Santa Cruz County assistant district attorney, who is trying the case.
Combs’ alleged 10-month crime spree in the San Lorenzo Valley ended at a run-down, vintage 1961 ranch house at 8408 Hihn Road in Ben Lomond at 5:45 a.m., Thursday, July 20.
An anonymous 911 emergency cell phone call placed from the residence was routed to the California Highway Patrol and then on to the Ben Lomond Fire Department and Sheriff’s Department.
“The person said someone was shot and they needed emergency medical and the sheriff,” said Dan Arndt, a Ben Lomond firefighter.
Kyle Joseph Baxter, 21, who had been shot, had already fled in his car to seek medical treatment. Bleeding from his tongue, ear, lips, nose and eye, he somehow drove to Scotts Valley where Scotts Valley firemen transported him to a medical facility, according to Scotts Valley Fire Dept. Captain Dennis Petteys.
Baxter, who has at least one drug conviction in Santa Cruz County, lost an eye in the shooting. The injury was considered non-life threatening.
“We thought it was pretty remarkable that the guy drove off (on his own),” Arndt said.
Combs, who also has a history of criminal arrests, had vanished after the shooting, driving a black Mazda truck by the time deputies arrived.
Although authorities have not revealed a motive for the attempted murder charge, Arndt said the residence is known by first responders as a “drug house.”
“That’s how it’s treated anytime we get a call there,” he said.
In the months prior to the attempted murder, Combs’ had been sexually tormenting his former girlfriend, according to interviews and court documents. The Sheriff’s Office were investigating the sex crimes at the time of the shooting on Hihn Road.
Named as “Jane Doe” in the criminal complaint, Combs’ ex-girlfriend contacted detectives saying she had been strong-armed and brutally attacked in a series of violent sex crimesbetween October of 2016 and July of this year.
The torment began last fall when Combs broke into the woman’s house to falsely imprison her by violence and criminal threat.
That threat was “unequivocal, unconditional, immediate and specific as to convey to said victim a gravity of purpose and an immediate prospect of execution,” wrote Gill, in the criminal charges file with superior court.
During that same time period, Combs is accused of sexually penetrating Jane Doe with a foreign object, exhibiting a firearm, and forcing oral copulation.
In June and July of this year, Combs threw caustic chemicals on Jane Doe while making criminal threats and assault likely to produce great bodily injury, according to court documents.
Jane Doe said the violence accelerated in July, a week before the attempted murder, when Combs forcibly raped and forced oral copulation, committed second-degree robbery, and assaulted her with a deadly weapon.
Former resident of Boulder Creek and current Santa Cruz resident Kristen Ridgeway contacted the Press Banner this week to tell of her own frightening experience with Combs.
“He’s (Combs) is a very, very bad man,” said Ridgeway, who said she is a recovering meth addict. She said she used drugs with Combs when she lived in the San Lorenzo Valley.
Ridgeway claims Combs came over to her house one time in a rage, claiming she had stolen something from him — a charge she vehemently denied.
“He said he would kill me,” said Ridgeway, who also knew Baxter. “He’s bad too.”
Ridgeway said she saw Combs remove a gun from his backpack and then put it back. He said “to forget she had seen it.”
She added that Combs returned to her house the next day with four men to harass her.
“He said you’re gonna die,” said Ridgeway, who added that she has been off drugs for two years.
Judge Siegel filed two protective orders making it illegal for Combs to contact or intimidate Jane Doe.
