Botched breakout
Michael Resterhouse, a former Muskegon resident and a co-defendant was unsuccessful in escaping from the Thumb Correctional Facility in September 2007, but made a serious try.
Thumb staff found the two with a 32-foot-long rope made of bed sheets, a club fashioned from a table leg, two sets of civilian clothing over their prison blues — perhaps to minimize injuries from the barbed wire fence — and a list of phone numbers and contacts for employment, said Prosecuting Attorney Byron Konschuh.
Circuit Judge Nick Holowka added 16 months-7 years to Resterhouses’s current prison term. His partner in the thwarted prison break asked for a jury trial, tentatively scheduled to begin July 8.

Threats end in jail
Leann Elizabeth MacArthur of Berlin Township was sentenced in circuit court recently to 45 days in jail and 18 months of probation for her guilty plea to two criminal charges that involved her un-neighborly visit last fall.
MacArthur, 21, was originally charged with home invasion, malicious destruction of property, illegal entry and felonious assault, felonies that carry a maximum of five years in prison. She was sentenced on counts of felonious assault and breaking and entering.
MacArthur was an occupant of an upper/lower apartment house owned by the father of a male friend in the other apartment. On Oct. 16, 2007 she “barged’ into the other apartment, screaming at a young woman who also lived there. Ignoring orders to leave, the 6-foot 3-inch MacArther cornered the woman, grabbed at her clothes, then went into the kitchen for a butcher knife. Two people grabbed her as she returned with the knife screaming that she was going to kill the woman, said Lapeer County Prosecutor Byron Konschuh. On her way out of the apartment, MacArthur damaged a vehicle.
She told court officers that she objected to the woman dating her friend. She also said she blacks out when she gets really angry. The judge also told her to have no contact with the victims.

Man jailed for burning woman
A Columbiaville man was sentenced to 330 days in jail with 150 days credit for attempted felonious assault on a woman who claimed he burned her face with a cigarette.
Justin Travis Jerke, 20, was accused by the victim of putting a burning cigarette near her eye. The injury occurred during at a party in the City of Lapeer. The victim, who was drinking, said she woke up in the basement of a home when Jerke jumped on her with a lit cigarette. She also told law enforcers that she felt she had been punched but she was under the influence of alcohol and not able to identify any other suspects.
Jerke could get his sentence waived past 90 days if he meets the financial obligations associated with his case.

More time for Thumb inmate
Thumb Correctional Facility inmate Dujuan Mitchell, 19, was ordered to spend another 2 years, 6 months to 4 years in prison after his current sentence is complete for his guilty plea to felonious assault in September 2006.
Mitchell has five felony convictions on his record including a maximum 30-year sentence in Wayne County for second-degree murder in 2005.
He was originally charged with third-degree criminal sexual assault in the 2006 incident but it was reduced to assault because of “sketchy cooperation” from the alleged victim, said Prosecutor Byron Konschuh.

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