(IRON MOUNTAIN, MI.)–A Breitung Township man will spend the next several years in prison for stabbing a Dickinson County deputy in the midsection during a struggle at his home last year. Matthew David Johnson, 25, was sentenced Thursday to a minimum of four years and nine months in prison, but he will receive credit for one year and eight months already served in the Dickinson County Jail. He will be eligible for enrollment in a special alternative incarceration program, which may allow for early release, once he has served four years. A Loretto man who stabbed and injured another man last year was sentenced Thursday in Dickinson County Circuit Court to four to 15 years in prison.
Judge Mary Barglind cited 46-year-old Timothy John LaPine’s extensive criminal history as a major factor in imposing the lengthy sentence. As LaPine’s criminal record increases, the potential for rehabilitation declines and the need to protect society from him rises, she said.
LaPine previously pleaded no contest to felonious assault and guilty to attempted unlawful driving away of a motor vehicle and a habitual offender-fourth status.
A 44-year-old Loretto man told police he and LaPine were at another person’s home Nov. 18 and LaPine left before he did. When the man left the house, he discovered his vehicle, which had a hunting rifle on the front passenger seat, was missing, according to the criminal complaint.
The man went to LaPine’s residence and found his vehicle behind a wood pile, the complaint stated.
The man claimed he was invited into the home and then witnessed LaPine take drugs and become “really strange,” according to the criminal complaint.
LaPine got two knives and held one to the man’s throat while telling a woman in the room, “We are going to kill him and you’re going to help,” the complaint stated.
The man told police LaPine stuck a filet knife in his chest and pressed it through multiple layers of clothing until it punctured his skin, leaving a half-inch diameter stab wound, according to the complaint.
He sought his own medical attention for the injury, Dickinson County Sheriff’s Office officials said.
These crimes were LaPine’s fifth and sixth felonies and topped off a record of five misdemeanors and some juvenile offenses, including a felonious assault conviction when he was a juvenile.
(Aaron Harper,WJNR,WOBE,WHTO)
aaronharper22@gmail.com