Wayside stabbing parallel case hearing moved
A man accused of getting two women to buy him electronics and then leaving them to pay the bill drove from Detroit with his attorney for a court hearing on Thursday, but there was one thing missing: the witnesses for the prosecution.
Octayvious Sanchez-lewis, 20, was charged Feb. 12 with one count of false pretenses and larceny by conversion, both between $1,000- $20,000, in two separate cases.
He was to face a preliminary exam Thursday morning to see if enough evidence exists to send him to trial.
He is also the man charged with three counts of assault with intent to commit murder and two counts of carrying a dangerous weapon with unlawful intent
after allegedly stabbing three people, one almost fatally, at Wayside Central on Feb. 23, 2020.
Instead of the prelim on Thursday, Alan Reimer, chief prosecuting attorney for the Isabella County Prosecutor’s Office, asked Circuit Court Judge Sara Spencernoggle for an adjournment because one of his witnesses now lives out-of-state and would have job-related problems returning to Michigan.
The other is out-of-state on vacation.
It wasn’t unusual for hearings to get delayed before the pandemic, and it’s become fairly common since.
Sanchez-lewis’ first case, for instance.
He was originally scheduled for a preliminary exam on March 12. Difficulty with witnesses prompted one adjournment until early May. That was again delayed until the middle of the month, when the case was bound over.
On Thursday, his case was adjourned until 1:45 p.m. on March 18. That is the same time and date as a co-defendant in the case. Sanchez-lewis was accused of convincing two women to buy him electronics — in one case a Macbook and ipad worth $2,064, and phones worth $5,868 in the other — before leaving them with the bill.
Sanchez-lewis’ attorney, Kirsten Irey-iverson, called the new cases an act of retaliation against her client because he wouldn’t take a plea deal in the Wayside stabbing case at his February arraignment.
A CMU Police spokesman said in February that one woman had come forward before the stabbing and one after, but delays caused by the pandemic slowed the investigation.
On Thursday, (SanchezLewis’) case was adjourned until 1:45 p.m. on March 18. That is the same time and date as a co-defendant in the case.