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(KRON) — A Santa Rosa man who pleaded no contest to bashing a stranger’s face with a rock after groping her in front of her daughter, leaving the mother permanently disfigured, will not face any prison time, the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office announced this week.
Trevor Lee Colombano, 38, of Santa Rosa, was sentenced Tuesday by Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Dana Simonds to four years of probation for the Oct. 30, 2023, attack. He had faced up to nine years in state prison in addition to 18 months in county jail after pleading no contest to assault with a deadly weapon, sexual battery and mayhem.
The judge’s decision countered requests from the victim, along with District Attorney Carla Rodriguez, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the Sonoma County Probation Department to send Colombano to prison, the DA’s office said.
The mother had just left her Santa Rosa apartment on a sunny fall afternoon, joined by her 13-year-old daughter and 13-year-old cousin and family dog, when Colombano approached from behind, prosecutors said. The stranger pressed up against the mother, and the mother attempted to fend him off.
Colombano started punching the woman in the head before he grabbed a landscaping rock and continued to bash her face with it, according to the DA’s office. The victim’s shirt and bra were ripped off in the struggle. Two bystanders who saw the attack pulled Colombano from the mother and pinned him to the ground until Santa Rosa Police Department officers arrived.
“I have cried more in the last six months than I have in my entire lifetime,” the mother told the court at her attacker’s sentencing. “My daughter and my little cousin, both thirteen at the time, had to witness the whole thing … I cannot even put into words the feeling of not being able to protect yourself or your child at the same time.”
The DA’s office said that the woman moved away from California following the assault.
In its recommendation of a prison sentence, the Sonoma County Probation Department said, “The defendant is statutorily limited from receiving probation and we cannot, even after much effort considering the complexities, favorable, and mitigating factors involved in this case, identify any factors that mark this matter an unusual case for probation consideration.”
Judge Simonds, who diverged from requests and recommendations when giving Colombano probation, referenced mental health issues and said Colombano’s cannabis consumption and stress were contributing factors in the brutal attack, according to the DA’s office.
“Justice was not served in this case,” DA Rodriguez said in a statement Tuesday expressing frustration with the sentence. “This woman will be permanently scarred for the rest of her life, both physically and emotionally. Her daughter and niece’s sense of safety and well-being will never be the same. Mr. Colombano is a menace to public safety, period, and should be sitting in prison.”