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SCOTTS VALLEY — Police have arrested two high school students in connection with a serious assault on a homeless man in Santa Cruz.
Scotts Valley police officers detained two students, minors whose names were not released due to their age, shortly before 11 a.m. Monday at the Scotts Valley High School campus, according to Capt. Scott Garner. The arrests were in connection with what was described as “an elderly male was battered” shortly before 8:30 p.m. Friday on the 1400 block of Ocean Street, according to a Santa Cruz Police Department media log.
The teens — including a 14-year-old Santa Cruz resident and a 16-year-old Scotts Valley resident — were booked into Santa Cruz County Juvenile Hall on suspicion of felony assault by means likely to cause great bodily injury.
Witnesses to the attack described seeing three juveniles attacking a man and “stomping” on his head, according to a Santa Cruz police release. Investigators later obtained video showing the assault victim running away from the juveniles on Ocean Street before they struck him down and then fled in a vehicle.
The 53-year-old man was transported to Bay Area Trauma Center in critical condition for treatment of head injuries. On Tuesday, Santa Cruz Deputy Chief of Police Jon Bush said the beating victim remained in the hospital recovering from his injuries, but was conscious and speaking. Bush dispelled rumors of the man’s demise, a thread that had run rampant on social media since the teens’ arrest.
Homelessness services provider Brent Adams, who operates the nearby Footbridge Services at the end of Felker Street, said the injured man was one of his clients. He, too, told the Sentinel that he had heard that the man was deceased.
“On the night of the attack, one of my clients arrived asking for a change of clothes because she had blood all over her for trying to save him,” Adams wrote in an email to the Sentinel. “Another client reported to trying to fight the attackers.”
Adams described the injured man as an “unbelievably sweet” person who regularly did odd jobs for Footbridge Services and businesses in the neighborhood. Adams said that the man, though homeless, had long-time connections to the Santa Cruz community.
Originally published at Jessica York