AUBURN — A local man was sentenced to a total of 56 years in prison Tuesday for kidnapping and sexual assaults in 2018 and 2022 involving a 13-year-old and an 18-year-old.

Razel M. Gavin, 28, had been convicted on multiple counts of kidnapping, aggravated assault, criminal threatening and gross sexual assault in connection with the random snatching of a 13-year-old girl in Auburn in April of 2022.

He was also convicted of gross sexual assault, aggravated assault and unlawful sexual contact in connection with the assault of a young woman he had met through a dating app in 2018. Prosecutors said Gavin twice sexually assaulted the young woman and then strangled her before letting her go.

Gavin on Tuesday was sentenced to a total of 56 years in the 2022 case and another 25 in the 2018 case, although the two sentences are to run concurrently.

He was sentenced by Androscoggin County Superior Court Justice Jennifer Archer, who deemed Gavin a danger to the community before handing down the sentence.

The 2022 kidnapping of the 13-year-old girl stunned the community as word went out that a teen had been grabbed off the street. One veteran investigator deemed it one of the most disturbing cases he’d ever worked on.

On the night of April 25, 2022, police were called to an Auburn home for a report of a missing teenager, according to Assistant Attorney General Kate Bozeman, who prosecuted the case.

Police said the missing girl was last seen by her parents in a parking lot across the street from their home. Surveillance video from a local business showed a dark-colored Volvo station wagon with a male operator entering the parking lot and leaving a short time later, police said.

Police said Gavin kidnapped the girl near her home in the early evening before assaulting her multiple times over six hours. Gavin was arrested in the early morning hours of the next day when Auburn Police Chief Jason Moen spotted Gavin driving a Volvo station wagon on Minot Avenue and followed him because the car fit the description of the suspicious vehicle identified in the case.

Gavin had a loaded pistol in his pocket, police said.

The girl told investigators she had been threatened by Gavin with a firearm, assaulted and forced into his car. She said she had been sexually assaulted in an apartment and in a wooded area over a six-hour period.

Gavin also strangled her multiple times with his hands and with a belt and told her he was going to kill her and offered her three ways to die, including beating, strangulation or a bullet, Bozeman said.

Police said the girl didn’t know Gavin.

When details about the kidnapping spread in the news and on social media, the victim of the 2018 attack, a young woman with intellectual disabilities, came forward. She told police she had been victimized by Gavin as well, four years earlier.

That information prompted a second investigation, this one by the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office, which gathered enough evidence of the sex assaults to result in a conviction.

In January, Gavin pleaded guilty in Androscoggin County Superior Court to seven crimes involving the 13-year-old girl. He also entered a so-called Alford Plea to a charge of aggravated attempted murder, where he didn’t admit to the criminal conduct, but agreed that a jury could find him guilty based on the evidence prosecutors could present against him at trial.

Likewise, Gavin entered an Alford Plea for the crimes he was accused of committing against the then-18-year-old woman in 2018.

Officials from both the Auburn Police Department and the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office expressed satisfaction with the sentences handed down on Tuesday.

“This was one of the most disturbing cases we’ve ever encountered,” said Auburn Police Chief Jason Moen of the 2022 kidnapping. “The courage of the victim, the dedication of our officers and the tireless work of the prosecutors ensured that this dangerous individual will never again harm another child. Today’s sentence sends a crystal clear message: Crimes of this nature will be met with the full force of the law.”

Androscoggin County Chief Deputy William Gagne, likewise, said he was “glad that justice has been served for the victims and that a dangerous guy is now off the street.”