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Seven Laroue with attorney Terry Shaw.
Branch man sent to jail for resisting police, breaking window.
By Allison Scarbrough, Editor.
#OceanaCountyCrime
HART — A 46-year-old Branch man was sentenced to 11 months in jail in 27th Circuit Court Monday, March 26, for convictions of two counts of assaulting/resisting/obstructing police and one count of malicious destruction of a building.
Seven Laroue, of 9534 N. 192nd Ave., chose not to have an attorney and represented himself during a trial last December. Laroue was found guilty by a 12-member jury on all three counts.
The charges stem from an incident last summer that occurred in Newfield Township just outside of Hesperia.
It was 1 a.m., and Laroue was “yelling and screaming and carrying on.” He broke a window at his neighbor’s house. “He had an issue with his neighbor,” Bizon said, and his neighbor was his former fifth grade teacher.
After breaking out his neighbor’s window, he went back to his place, where Oceana County sheriff’s deputies found him in “a sleeping position,” the prosecutor said. After police woke him up, he tried sneaking out the window and escaping in the woods. Then, “a tussle in a retaining pond” ensued with the deputies.
No injuries occurred in the incident, Bizon said.
Judge Robert D. Springstead ordered that Laroue cannot have any contact with the victims in the case.
“This was a huge misunderstanding,” Laroue said.
Bizon argued for a prison term based on Laroue’s “behavior during the court process and in the jail.” He said, “County jail time is not appropriate. Due to his record, he needs to go to prison.”
Sentencing guidelines in the case are two to 17 months, said Springstead, who gave Laroue credit for 272 days served in jail. He was also ordered to pay $169.50 in restitution.
Laroue also faces a charge of assault by strangulation in Newaygo County regarding a separate incident.
Laroue was previously convicted of third-offense operating while intoxicated in Newaygo County in 2013 and sentenced to one year and one month to 10 years in prison; third-offense domestic violence in 2005 in Oceana County and sentenced to one to two years in prison; and killing/torturing animals in 2005 in Oceana County and sentenced to one and a half to four years in prison, according to the Offender Tracking Information System (OTIS).
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