Crime & Safety

Year in Review: Crimes, Misdemeanors, Courts and Fire

The police files got your attention this year, whether the case was tragic or just troublesome. Here's a look back at the stories which were looked at the most.

 

We started the year with a tragic story from Milwaukee after a couple with local ties were killed while waiting at a stop light. Ed and Jean Thaves were not Muskego residents, but their business S.C. Chemical Company, was located here. That this garnered the readers that it did showed how much our readers cared about this couple and the company that mourned their loss. Kelly Duke, the driver who fled the scene, pleaded no contest to all counts including two counts of homicide by intoxicated use of a vehicle in October, and awaits sentencing on Jan. 13. 2013.

A house fire in February on a sunny Saturday morning was tragic for the home's tenants, but the community responded to help out, with a fundraiser at Danny Haskell's.

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Conversely, this crash in May at Big League Barbers had many of us shaking our head and smiling, in part because miraculously no one was hurt, and a woman's shoe took the blame. SUV Crashes Through Storefront.

fire laid to waste a 100-year-old barn on Muskego's northwest side in May. Ironically, it prefaced a summer that had so little rain as to ban fires and fireworks and render us under extreme drought. The fire was started by a lightning strike during a brief rainstorm.

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More disturbing news came in June, as a 13-year-old's sexual assault led to about a dozen charges for a 21-year-old man in both Milwaukee and Waukesha County courts. It also led to a portion of the Skout.com website to be shut down. Daniel R. Schmidt, the defendant, has already received his sentence in Waukesha County for child pornography charges, but still awaits trail in Milwaukee for the assault.

Many of our crime stories were pulled from the court documents after charging, and one of the stories that grabbed particular interest - again involving heroin - involved two Muskego Men who were charged after getting ice cream in July. 

Other stories garnered a lot of debate among readers. This story, which ran in August, pitted those who wanted to pat the mom on the back for not covering up for her son, John Gemeinhardt, with those who felt she ruined his life unnecessarily. The teen was charged with drug possession after his mom lets police search the car he was driving. While Gemeinhardt pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of impeding traffic by slow speed, he awaits trail for possession of THC and drug paraphernalia.

Back to the stories that certainly had most of you shaking your head, a brief nugget off of the Muskego Police blotter grabbed your attention, as a 12-year old girl reportedly bit a police officer in October in an attempt to flee. 

One of the saddest court cases that initiated in Sept. 2011 came to a conclusion one year later as Annmarie Schulte was sentenced for sending pictures of her daughter to a man she met on the internet.

Most recently, a domestic dispute led to a man barricading himself in his Muskego home, leading police to send in the heavy hardware to get him out. Around the same time, a Muskego man was killed in Genessee after an accident. The Waukesha man who hit him is charged with driving without a license and causing great bodily harm.

As much traffic as these stories always get, we hope not to run so many next year. Let's stay safe and behave out there.


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