Despite his attorney’s advice against it, Andrew Jewell, the 19-year-old man accused of grabbing an eight-year-old girl at a Sandusky thrift store in August, testified on his own behalf at his preliminary examination today before being bound over to Sanilac County Circuit Court.
Though Jewell is facing three charges, including misdemeanor assault and battery, assistant prosecutor Robert Heyboer focused more on establishing probable cause for the two felony charges of attempted unlawful imprisonment and attempted kidnapping/child enticement, later requesting that the second charge be amended to just kidnapping/child enticement, not just attempted. Unlawful imprisonment is punishable by 15 years in prison and child enticement carries a possible life sentence.
With the courtroom ordered closed to the public during their testimony (but still available via a live feed), both child witnesses gave testimony about the August incident during this afternoon’s hearing, recounting how Jewell allegedly grabbed the 8-year-old girl by the shoulders as she looked at toys and dragged her halfway into the thrift store’s bathroom. While witnesses couldn’t agree exactly where they were standing in the store at the time of the incident, details from the girl and her six-year-old brother corroborated with their mother Sydney Kitchen’s account, with District Court Judge Gregory Ross finding the three witnesses credible in their storytelling.
The same could not be said about Jewell’s testimony, wherein he maintains that he was in the bathroom with headphones in, using the facilities after seeing the family enter the store and after attending to a few other tasks on his scheduled four hour shift, when the girl tried to enter the bathroom. Jewell claims that he attempted to push the girl out of the bathroom as he pulled his pants up, with the push causing the girl to hit her head on the doorframe, but testimony from responding Sandusky Police Officer Matthew Gezequel negated the injury claim. When asked by prosecutors, Kitchen noted that when she approached the bathroom to help her daughter, she could see that the figure holding the girl was clothed and not with his pants around his knees as Jewell claimed he’d been.
In addition to these holes poking through the story, Jewell, despite saying he had not interacted with the child and her family until the bathroom incident, did affirm to Heyboer that he had offered a free toy to the child for coming into the store that day. Heyboer was also able to question Jewell about the incident in a Saginaw movie theater’s bathroom in February 2022, with Jewell’s lawyer objecting but being overruled in regards to the crime’s relevance to the case. Heyboer hoped to establish a pattern of behavior by the defendant.
Jewell had been charged in February 2022 with assault and battery after entering a women’s restroom and allegedly grabbing another young girl and putting his hand over her mouth. While Jewell insisted on the stand that he did not do that in the Saginaw incident, it should be noted that Jewell ultimately pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor charge stemming from the circumstances, and that Jewell admitted to having contact with the case’s victim.
Following testimony, Ross noted that he did not find the defendant credible, and that based on testimony presented, there was probable cause for the charges. Jewell is scheduled to be in circuit court on Wednesday, December 20, at 9:00 a.m. for his arraignment and pretrial conference.
