Daily Stormer The Most Censored Publication in History
M Live
June 11, 2014
A Bay City teenager is going to spend up to a decade in prison for bludgeoning a man with a mallet, an incident that a judge and assistant prosecutor said nearly proved fatal.
Bay County Chief Circuit Judge Kenneth W. Schmidt on Monday, June 9, sentenced 17-year-old Terrence L. Conklin to 20 months to 10 years in prison on a charge of assault with intent to cause harm less than murder. Conklin pleaded no contest to the charge in April.
A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt, but is treated as such for the purposes of sentencing
Schmidt also ordered Conklin to pay a total of $34,455 in fines, costs and restitution and gave him credit for 15 days served.
The sentence stems from Conklin on May 13, 2013, striking 28-year-old Ryan W. Zwiefka in the head with a mallet in Baytown Family Neighborhood on Bay City’s East Side. Zwiefka suffered severe injuries as a result, including a depressed skull fracture, a subarachnoid bleed, an orbital fracture and multiple other facial fractures.
“I just wanna say that I’m truly sorry for the incident that happened,” Conklin told Schmidt. “I honestly am sorry for my mistakes and this is not the person that I am. If I could, I would apologize to him, y’know, and that’s it.”
Zwiefka did not make a statement on the record at Conklin’s sentencing, but Schmidt, Bay County Assistant Prosecutor J. Dee Brooks and defense attorney Rod O’Farrell made reference to a victim’s impact statement he had previously written.
“This was a very unfortunate and avoidable situation on the part of all parties,” O’Farrell said. He said that while Zwiefka said he was not in Baytown to buy drugs, he did admit to consuming a pint of vodka earlier in the day and had made a racist comment toward Conklin sometime prior to the attack.
Schmidt rhetorically asked O’Farrell if that gave his client, 16 at the time, a right to assault him. O’Farrell replied that it did not give his client any such right, but it put the attack in context.
“It happened very quickly,” O’Farrell said. “My client lost his temper.”
O’Farrell asked the judge to give Conklin a lengthy probation sentence.
Brooks objected to this and advocated for a prison sentence.
“When we first heard of this case, we were treating it as a potential homicide,” Brooks said. He said that Conklin was on probation at the time, having prior convictions for malicious destruction of property and aggravated assault, both from 2012.
Brooks added that a message needed to be sent both to Conklin and the community that such behavior will not be tolerated.
Schmidt agreed, stating that Conklin was lucky Zwiefka didn’t die as a result of the wounds Conklin inflicted.
After the assault, Zwiefka told police he was riding his bicycle near Baytown’s basketball courts when a group of six or seven young men approached him and told him to leave their neighborhood.
“I was on my bike and began to ride away,” Zwiefka told police, according to court records. “Then one of the guys hit me in the face with a mini sledgehammer. He hit me like five times.”
Zwiefka told police he met the man who hit him a few days beforehand. He also told police he lives at the Good Samaritan Rescue Mission, 713 Ninth St. on Bay City’s East Side.
Hospital staff told police about Zwiefka’s injuries. He was taken via helicopter to Hurley Medical Center in Flint for further treatment.
Police went door to door in the neighborhood and spoke with an area resident who said he saw Zwiefka surrounded by six or seven young men. He said he recorded the incident on his phone and heard Zwiefka ask for “coke.”
The neighbor also said he heard the younger men asking Zwiefka how much money he had, and Zwiefka reply that he had $3. One of the men, who had a hammer, demanded the $3, then hit Zwiefka when he started to leave, the neighbor told police.
On May 16, police interviewed a 16-year-old male at the Bay County Juvenile Home. The teen said he was present during the assault, saying Zwiefka and another teen, Conklin, began arguing over something. The young crowd told Zwiefka he had to leave and Conklin demanded $3 from him, the teen told police.
During the confrontation, one of the younger men went into a residence and came back with a mallet, which he handed to Conklin, the teen said. When Ziefka started to pedal away, Conklin hit him with the mallet and then the group scattered, the teen said.
The neighbor police earlier interviewed also identified Conklin as the culprit from a photo lineup, court records show.
Conklin was on bond at the time of his sentencing, but Schmidt remanded him to the custody of the Bay County Sheriff’s Office immediately to start serving his sentence.
