|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
12/28/2006Newsmakers 2006Suttons Bay teen serving sentence for foiled kidnapping plot
Dean Michael Kinske is led out of 86th District Court after his arraignment before Judge Thomas Phillips. TRAVERSE CITY — Jennifer Hecht returned to the volleyball court just days after living through a terrifying experience. Hecht led her Class D Leland High School volleyball team to a tournament title two days after a fellow classmate burst into her Cedar home in January and made hostages of Jennifer and her mother, LeeAnn Hecht. "I said, 'I'm going to do it. I want to. I have to get through it somehow.' So I played,” she said at the time. Hecht now plays volleyball for Division II Glenville State in West Virginia. Dean Michael Kinske, now 19, was convicted of first-degree home invasion, assault with a dangerous weapon and felony firearms possession after he forced his way into the residence and held the women at gunpoint around 11 p.m. Jan. 26. Dressed in full camouflage and armed with a recently purchased AR-15 rifle, a masked Kinske handcuffed LeeAnn in a bedroom and tried to take Jennifer hostage for ransom. But his plan unraveled when Jennifer recognized his voice and confronted him. "I was thinking, 'I know who this is, I know who this is,''' she said in a February interview. "Are you Dean Kinske?” she asked. "He said, 'No.' I asked again, 'Are you Dean Kinske?' He whispered, 'Yes.'” "I don't remember what I said. I just kept walking in my room. He followed me into my room and that's when he took the mask off.” Kinske eventually apologized to the family, then fled. He took off on a rambling drive downstate, abandoned his Jeep and gun and made his way back to the area. Police searched for Kinske for two days before police picked him up as he walked along Silver Lake Road in Traverse City. Kinske again apologized to the family when he was sentenced, but did not say why he targeted the Hechts. "I honestly do not know,” Kinske said at his sentencing in June. "I am still not sure.” The Suttons Bay teen is in prison until at least 2013. He is serving his sentence at Muskegon Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison. See related stories:
|
|
