Kincheloe Kidnapping: A Knife, a Stolen Car, an Arrest

It reads like the plot of a movie, but Michigan State Police say it played out for real this month in the eastern Upper Peninsula: a stolen car in Green Bay, a knife, a long drive across state lines, and finally a man sprinting into a Kincheloe Dollar General, begging the cashier to call 911.

According to a Michigan State Police news release, it started on Tuesday, June 9, when troopers at the Sault Ste. Marie post got a call from the Green Bay Police Department: a 26-year-old man had allegedly stolen a vehicle in Green Bay and was believed to be heading toward Sault Ste. Marie. Investigators say the man told his adult male roommate to get in the car, then produced a knife and threatened to harm him unless he came along to Michigan.

The two crossed into Chippewa County, in Michigan’s far eastern U.P. — and then the getaway came apart. The stolen car broke down on M-28 near M-221, so, police say, the pair hitchhiked the rest of the way to Kincheloe, a small community south of Sault Ste. Marie. That’s where the man being held saw his opening: he ran into the local Dollar General and asked the cashier to call 911, saying he had been kidnapped.

Troopers were dispatched and didn’t have to look far. They found the suspect a short distance away, sitting inside the Pizza Patch restaurant, and took him into custody without incident. He was booked into the Chippewa County Jail. State police credited the Sault Tribe Police Department and Chippewa County Central Dispatch with assisting.

The charge isn’t actually “kidnapping”

Here’s a wrinkle a lot of the quick coverage glossed over. Even though the case has been described all over the internet as a “kidnapping,” that’s not the charge on the books. The 26-year-old was arraigned June 10 in 91st District Court on two counts: unlawful imprisonment and receiving and concealing stolen property — a motor vehicle. In Michigan, unlawful imprisonment — knowingly restraining someone by using a weapon or by secretly confining them — is a felony that carries up to 15 years in prison. It’s a close cousin of kidnapping, but a separate, specific charge. His bond was set at $250,000 cash with a tether, according to state police. The case was filed in Chippewa County’s 91st District Court, and no outcome from his June 22 court date had been publicly reported as of Sept. 10. As in any criminal case, he is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

The quiet hero: a public place and a phone call

If there’s a lesson tucked inside the strangeness, it’s in how the ordeal ended. The man got himself to a public, staffed location and asked a stranger for help. In this case, a Dollar General cashier in a town a lot of people have never heard of may have been the one who brought it to a close.

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