SANTA CRUZ — A person caught within the act of allegedly making an attempt to sail away in an deserted boat is a suspect in a Humboldt County homicide, authorities realized this weekend.
Santa Cruz Harbormaster Blake Anderson stated his deputies noticed an roughly 26-foot deserted boat creeping towards the mouth of the Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor shortly earlier than 4 p.m. After they seen a person on board, Anderson stated, deputies assumed they have been responding to a rescue.
“He’s bought the sail up and he’s sort of bouncing alongside the rocks,” Anderson stated Monday.
Video surveillance footage launched to the Sentinel exhibits a ship rising from a dock the place it had been saved on the harbor’s western aspect, throughout from the general public launch, its sail wildly flapping within the wind.
Anderson stated Senior Deputy Harbormaster John Haynes, Deputy Harbormaster David Hill and Deputy Harbormaster Parker Man responded in a patrol boat earlier than the sailboat exited the harbor. The person on board, nevertheless, was “instantly confrontational with them.”
“He tried to return contained in the cabin, however they have been in a position to detain and get him onto our patrol boat earlier than he might return within the cabin,” Anderson stated.
The deputies returned with the person in cuffs — later decided to be 27-year-old Austin Medeiros of Warwick, Rhode Island — to the launch ramp, sailboat in tow. There, Santa Cruz police supplied backup and searched the boat for a possible confederate, Anderson stated. Contained in the cabin, officers discovered a loaded stolen firearm and about 29 grams of psychedelic mushrooms, in line with the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Workplace.
“For our guys to go from rescue mode into ‘OK, this can be a doubtlessly harmful individual’ — to modify gears like that and forestall him from going again into the cabin, the place there was a loaded gun, that was actually good on our guys,” Anderson stated.
Officers later realized that Medeiros was needed on a warrant out of Humboldt County in reference to the April 3 loss of life of 28-year-old Emily Rose Could Lobba, of Kneeland. Lobba was discovered useless by a caregiver arriving for a repeatedly scheduled appointment on the girl’s residence, in line with Humboldt County authorities. A person there reportedly tried to refuse the caregiver entry to the property, then allegedly assaulted the caregiver and fled in Lobba’s automobile. In response to the caregiver, the person and Lobba knew one another and had been spending time collectively within the days previous to this incident, the sheriff’s workplace wrote in a media launch.
Medeiros remained held Monday afternoon in Santa Cruz County Jail in lieu of $1 million bail on suspicion of the Humboldt County homicide and several other associated out-of-county prices, in addition to native prices of misdemeanor grand theft, felony carrying a stolen loaded firearm and misdemeanor transporting psychedelic mushrooms.