Man in court for threatening a woman at gunpoint

ANTIGO — A man being charged with 14 felonies and a slew of misdemeanors in connection to several violent incidents at the end of August appeared by Zoom in the Langlade County Courthouse Monday morning.

Zeth Ashton, 28 — who among many other charges stands accused of armed burglary with a dangerous weapon, strangulation and suffocation, and false imprisonment — waived his right to a preliminary hearing at the brief hearing. He is scheduled to make a formal plea Oct. 21.

According to the criminal complaint, the charges against Ashton were filed days after his on-again, off-again girlfriend reported that he broke in to her Antigo residence multiple times over several nights to take her phone, apparently both because he believed her to be sleeping with someone else and because she was threatening to report him to the police.

Though she and the person she lived with had told Ashton he was not allowed in the residence, on Aug. 24, he showed up in her room around 1 a.m., calling her names, waving a gun around, and demanding to see her phone. When she refused, he pinned her down, put the gun to her forehead, and threatened to kill her, saying, “I will kill you and dump you in a swamp.”

On Aug. 26, after going to sleep next to her phone, the woman woke up to find it gone. Ashton had entered the house while she was sleeping and taken it, she came to believe. After she threatened to call the police, it was returned to her — but also had been returned to its factory settings.

The next night, Ashton came uninvited to her residence again. The woman told police he choked her, slammed her against the headboard, and said something to the effect of, “If you’re going to say I’m abusive, I’ll show you abusive.”

Police later reported a bruise on the woman, which apparently formed while he was holding her down.

The woman reported these incidents to police Aug. 29, and the same day, they executed a search warrant of Ashton’s residence and apprehended him, despite some resistance, after spotting him walking nearby.

Police found meth and other drug paraphernalia inside his home.

Ashton is being held at the Langlade County Jail on a $200,000 bond. His Oct. 21 arraignment is scheduled for 1:30 p.m.