RUPTURED PEACE
Violent outburst upends quiet area, leaving three dead in less than an hour
KEWASKUM - Forest View Road cuts a straight line through quiet farmland north of West Bend before gently rising and twisting into a wooded area with several homes, some tucked inside.
These days, the fields are snow-covered, more peaceful than ever.
On Feb. 3, a mid-afternoon spasm of violence ruptured the area in ways the local folks struggle to comprehend. A 30-year-old man, out of prison for two months and struggling for years with mental health issues, careened down the road in a stolen car and rolled the vehicle. He clambered from the wreck and began to go house to house, desperate to grab another car.
By the time it ended, two neighbors would be killed and the gunman would lie dead, taken down by a sheriff ’s deputy armed with a patrol rifle.
“I’ve been here 30 years and I don’t ever recall having complete strangers being the victims of homicides,” Washington County Sheriff Martin Schulteis said.
As he and others put together the pieces, they understand there will forever be unanswerable questions about what drove Nicholas S. Pingel to a killing spree in a corner of Washington County.
The void will especially be hard for the victims’ families.
There’s the family of Ray Engelking, 72, a beloved former teacher at West Bend West High School, a man who loved his wife and sons, his students, his gardens and his travels.
There’s the family of Carl Halvorsen, 77, a retired semi-driver for Cedar Valley Cheese, an avid outdoorsman and sports fan who was pictured in his obituary wearing head-to-toe hunting gear in what clearly was a successful outing.
Spiraling downward
Court documents portray Pingel as a troubled man with a history of burglaries and other violent or inappropriate behavior stretching back to 2013.
In 2014 he pleaded guilty to three felony counts of burglary in Washington County. He was accused of breaking into the homes of four people – at least one of whom Pingel knew – and stealing marijuana, alcohol, prescription medication and video games.
A year later, Pingel pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of criminal trespassing after he was caught entering the apartment of his neighbor in Washington County.
According to the criminal complaint, the neighbor suspected Pingel had entered her home at least once before when she was away, so she laid a trap for him by parking her car out of sight. When she confronted him after he opened her door with a butter knife, Pingel did not seem surprised to see her and said he thought he heard her moving around inside the apartment.
He later told police he entered the home because he found the door unlocked and wanted to borrow some coffee.
“He felt there was nothing wrong with this,” the complaint said.
It’s unclear from online court records what sentences Pingel received for those incidents. But while he was in Washington County Jail in March 2016, he was charged with disorderly conduct after allegedly sexually harassing another inmate on multiple occasions, according to the criminal complaint. He pleaded guilty.
According to authorities, Pingel spent “much of the past four years” in a correctional institution until his release on Dec. 1, 2020.
He was put on active community supervision, according to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, and resided in DOC-owned housing on West Main Street in downtown West Bend.
He got into trouble quickly.
On Dec. 12, Pingel was charged with three misdemeanors in connection with a fight at a West Bend tavern called The Inferno. The criminal complaint said Pingel punched an employee six times in the head with a closed fist after he was prevented from taking a beer outside.
Pingel was released from custody on a $2,500 signature bond two days later.
Pingel often spent his days walking the streets of downtown West Bend, said David B. Nelson, who met and befriended him about a month ago.
Once or twice a week, Pingel stopped at Nelson’s apartment. Nelson fed him dinner and gave him rides when needed.
Nelson said Pingel was respectful but “rough around the edges,” temperamental and prone to starting fights with others. He didn’t think Pingel was friends with anyone else, and he guessed he had mental health issues.
“He did seem a little off,” Nelson said.
Pingel’s family told authorities he suffered from mental health issues for the last decade.
By early this year, he was spiraling downward.
The Washington County Sheriff ’s Department said that in the week before the killing spree, Pingel disconnected from his family, displayed erratic behavior and “signs of extreme paranoia,” and was believed to have stopped taking medication used to help him cope with his mental illness.
Pingel was upset his federal stimulus check hadn’t arrived, Nelson said, and despaired that he had no money, job, friends or place to stay once the housing for parolees ended.
Twice, Pingel told Nelson he didn’t want to live. Nobody cared about him, he said.
“I said, ‘Well, I feel for you and I can help you. I’d love to help you get on your feet and do this as a team,’” Nelson said. He tried to offer Pingel some hope, and said he could sleep on the couch if needed.
Nelson’s friend Jesse “Jesus” Salazar of Chicago met Pingel a few times and said he found him to be “a very dangerous man.” Pingel was always talking about money, Salazar said, and once he asked to take Salazar’s car “for a spin.”
“He was itching for money and for means of transportation. I never trusted him around anyone,” Salazar said. “He definitely was desperate to drive someone’s vehicle.”
Pingel told Nelson the DOC housing ran out Feb. 1, so he stayed at Nelson’s apartment that night, and the next as well.
Nelson did not know was that Pingel still was supposed to be in the DOC housing. The agency issued an arrest warrant for him Feb. 2.
A Department of Corrections spokesman said after Pingel’s arrest in the bar fight, he “had been engaged with his agent since his release to supervision, attending meetings with and calling the agent regularly, and had shown a willingness to work with the agent to get the programming/services that he needed.
“However, on February 2nd, the agent was informed Mr. Pingel had left the transitional living program where he had been staying and had attempted to purchase, sell or use drugs. Shortly following that notification, a little after noon on February 2nd, the agent submitted an apprehension request (warrant) for Mr. Pingel to seek custody and to investigate possible drug sales or use and for failing to seek treatment as a condition of his release.”
The night of Feb. 2, Pingel was “out of character” and “seemed very disturbed,” Salazar said. Pingel got angry about Salazar making a phone call and threatened to kill him, he said.
Trying to calm him down, Salazar suggested the three of them go bowling. When they returned to the apartment, Pingel was up for hours snacking and making noise. At one point, Salazar caught him trying to steal his credit cards from his wallet.
By about 6 a.m. on Feb. 3, Nelson told him, “You’ve got to get out of here if you’re going to be this loud.” Pingel was gone for about an hour, then returned for a few minutes. He said he was going to rob a nearby Kwik Trip, and Salazar tried to discourage him.
Salazar remembers Pingel saying, “You guys will probably never hear from me again.”
A mentor, and an outdoorsman
Ray Engelking devoted his career to teaching students, to giving them a firm grasp of consumer economics.
Growing up in Barrington, Illinois, Engelking yearned to be a baseball player, but a motorcycle crash put him on another path — education. After graduating from Indiana State University, he spent one year teaching in Terre Haute, Indiana, and arrived at West Bend West High School in 1970.
He would stay for 35 years.
He also was part of the faculty of Moraine Park Technical College for 25 years, teaching night classes at the West Bend campus as well as at the Waupun Correctional Institution.
“Every kid should have an opportunity to have a teacher like Ray Engelking,” said Don Engle, who was mentored by Engelking years ago.
“I went into high school just a ship without a rudder, and he directed me in areas of my life I still hold dear today,” said Engle, who now works at a BMW dealership in southern California.
Engelking helped run the debate team, chess team, drama program and more, and he often took struggling students under his wing, Engle said.
He was a good listener and not judgmental, showing Engle “there’s other things to do besides getting in trouble,” he said.
He also was willing to pass on all he learned as a teacher to others, leaving behind books and lesson plans for his successor at the school, Mike Rahlf.
“I told him I felt very inadequate,” Rahlf recalled. “He said, ‘Mike, don’t worry about that. You’re not me. Nobody expects you to do things the same way I did. You’re a different person. You’ll figure it out.’ “
Engelking and his wife, Deborah, who worked as a special education teacher, were married in 1974.
Engelking’s three sons were deeply attached to their father, who was an avid hunter and fisherman, took countless photographs, and reveled in family vacations. He coached his sons in baseball and soccer. Later, he coached golf.
“I saw him as a friend and respected him as a father,” Rhett Engelking said.
Just a year ago, the family took a memorable trip: three generations visiting a sustainable communities project that Engelking helped finance in Kenya. His youngest son Zachary worked on the project.
“For our parents, it was important that we get a perspective outside of our town,” Rhett Engelking said. “The world is bigger than our ZIP code.”
One of Engelking’s neighbors was Carl Halvorsen.
Betsy Wasmer described her brother Carl as “a typical old man who enjoyed the outdoors.”
Growing up, she followed his every step, fishing, hunting, going for a skate when the water froze on Wilke Lake in Manitowoc County.
“We’d sit in the duck blind with the dogs underneath,” she said of learning how to hunt.
Wasmer said her brother had grown to enjoy retirement at the home he shared with his girlfriend.
“It was nice,” she said. “There were patio doors out to the back. He could feed the deer out the door. He had a pond in the back.”
“It was just a safe place out in the country,” she said. “It didn’t turn out that way.”
An outburst of destruction
It was around 2:30 p.m. on Feb. 3, a Wednesday, when a man walked out of his home on Marcia Avenue in West Bend to warm up his gray 2013 Volkswagen Jetta while he prepared to take his son to work. The man’s name has been redacted from court records.
After stepping back inside the house, the man’s son watched as a stranger wearing jeans and a tan Carhartt jacket walked by, according to a report from the West Bend Police Department.
The man passed the Jetta, stopped, turned around and headed for the car.
The car owner hurried outside to confront the man, but he wasn’t quick enough. The man hopped inside the Jetta and sped off.
Pingel was at the wheel of the Jetta, heading north, out of town.
No one will ever know why he ended up Forest View Road.
What happened is culled from interviews and statements from the Washington County Sheriff’s Department.
About four miles into his trip, at a curve, Pingel rolled the vehicle.
It was 2:45 p.m.
He got out, went to a nearby home that was unoccupied and forced his way in.
A 52-year-old woman from Port Washington who was passing the scene at the time stopped to see if anyone was hurt in the wreck.
Pingel approached the woman, physically assaulted her and tried to steal her vehicle. He immediately crashed it at the driveway of the unoccupied home.
He was moving on foot now, headed north, up the road.
It was 2:50 p.m.
He came to the Engelking residence and kicked in the front door.
Deborah was on the first floor. Her husband, Ray, was in the basement, doing chores.
“My father didn’t know what was going on until my mother cried for help,” Rhett Engelking said.
Pingel demanded car keys. Somehow he couldn’t work the ignition, so he stormed back, demanding another set of keys. Pingel returned, physically assaulted Deborah and Ray, and headed back to the car. Ray got his handgun and confronted Pingel.
“We don’t know the exact sequence of events, but ultimately the gun was taken away from him,” said Schulteis, the sheriff.
Pingel shot and killed Ray. He then tried to shoot Deborah, but the gun didn’t fire.
Pingel moved on, still heading north. Deborah called 911.
Pingel came to Halvorsen’s home. Carl was the only one there. Pingel killed Halvorsen with one of the hunter’s own shotguns.
The first arriving sheriff’s deputies pulled up near Halvorsen’s home and encountered Pingel trying to leave the area. It was around 3:05 p.m. There was a brief shootout. Washington County Sheriff ’s Deputy Lee Goodman fired his rifle and Pingel went down a small embankment. The area was secured. Law enforcement officials sent up a drone, and Pingel was spotted. Officers approached the body. Pingel was dead.
The crime scene was sixth-tenths of a mile long. Law enforcement knew from Deborah’s 911 call that Ray had been shot. They didn’t know about Halvorsen, and didn’t find the body until around 7 p.m., in an area between the home and the garage.
‘I can’t imagine what they’re going through’
Days later, it’s still hard to comprehend what occurred.
“Our number one concern is the families,” Schulteis said. “I can’t imagine what they’re going through.”
Halvorsen’s family is mourning in private.The obituary asks that mourners consider a donation in Carl’s memory to the Wisconsin Waterfowl Association. It notes that he will be lovingly remembered by his many grandchildren, remaining family and friends.
The Engelkings said they don’t want Ray’s life defined by his final five minutes.
“There’s nothing my parents could have done to stop this rampage,” Rhett Engelking said. “They did all I can imagine one would be able to do or at least try to do. This person was carrying a lot of pain and violence from somewhere else and just brought it to our doorstep.”
The family has established the Ray Engelking Memorial Scholarship Fund to support West Bend West students at risk of not graduating by funding educational opportunities at Moraine Park Technical College.
“We talked as a family,” Rhett Engelking said.
“We thought the scholarship fund was the best direction to take our anger and sorrow and love of our father.”