Posted on 11/11/2003 4:10:20 PM PST by Dan from Michigan
Arsonist's parents must pay $715,000
Judge suggests they try to get money from insurance company
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
BY TOM TOLEN
News Staff Reporter
HOWELL - The parents of a student who set fire to the Howell High School last year must pay for all of the damage, which totaled more than $715,000.
Livingston County Family Court Judge Susan Reck ruled Monday that the parents are legally responsible for their son's actions and must pay the full amount of restitution.
Reck, who has scheduled a review hearing for Feb. 12, suggested to the couple that they try to get the money from their insurance carrier. In the interim, Reck got the district's insurance carrier to agree that it would not attempt to collect from the parents before the next hearing.
Ed Davison of Flint, the lawyer for State Farm, the parents' insurance company, could not be reached for comment on the judge's decision.
Reck ordered the boy to pay fines of $225, court costs of $705 and a victim assessment payment of $160. He also must reimburse the state for his time in a residential treatment facility.
At a June hearing, the judge ruled that more than $715,000 in damage to the school must be reimbursed to the schools' insurance carrier, but did not rule how much the parents, and how much the boy, would have to pay.
The boy was sentenced on July 15 on three counts of arson, breaking and entering, and malicious destruction of property. He was given a blended sentence, pleading guilty as an adult, but being sentenced as a juvenile. He remains at Arbor Heights Center in Ann Arbor, where he has been held since sentencing.
On April 8, 2002, the boy, who is now 16, broke into the high school where he was a student and set several fires in the library. It tripped the school's sprinkler system, which extinguished the fire but caused considerable water damage. The boy was arrested two days later when police say they caught him trying to break into McPherson Middle School.
Yup...I knew that was the weakness in my case.
He and his wife spent years - from when these kids were 14 until they were old enough to get kicked out - being afraid to sleep, because they never knew what would happen. A call from the police was a good day.
Sometimes good parents get bad kids. Sometimes it's the other way around.
So far she hasn't had the guts to really screw up, but she's laying the groundwork. We're hopeful she'll get a clue before she does something life-changing, in the meantime we exercise constant parental vigilence.
One funny note: yesterday my husband was driving her and her friend around and the friend remarked that her mother was "in her business". My husband inserted himself into their conversation and informed them both that as long as they were minors, everything was mom's "business". They were quiet after that. ;-)
Hugs to you and your grandbaby... and prayers for your daughter.
You sound like exceptional parents. I routed through everything I could...backpacks, notebooks, pockets...to find out what they were 'thinking' and boy howdy was it ever revealing. The influences these days come from everywhere, and the battle against them is relentless.
I could never understand mothers who think because their kids are finally teenagers, they can go back to work and leave them on their own.
That's when kids crave structure the most. Unfortunately, too many parents want to be comforted by their kids and it should be the other way around.
There's a really cool children's book by Don and Audrey Wood called "Heggity Peg" about a witch who turns several siblings into food, and their mother who can only save them by identifying who's who. It's a brilliant tale of a mother who really knows her children.
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