COVID, commerce and murders
School board tumult, homicides among area’s top five stories
2021 was a tumultuous year in mid-michigan. For the last day of the year and first of 2022, we’re looking back at the top 10 stories from the area. Today, it’s stories 5-1.
5 . Mt. Pleasant Board of Education recall effort
In the wake of COVID-19 lockdowns, mandates and other restrictions, members of boards of education across the country are facing backlash for mask mandates, including three in Mt. Pleasant.
Language for a recall election against Amy Bond, Courtney Stegman and Wiline Pangle was approved in August.
After initial language was rejected by the Isabella County Election Commission, recall supporters reworded and approved, following the board’s July decision to require that children younger than 11 wear masks.
Recall backers said in late December that they would fail to gather enough signatures to trigger a recall election for Pangle, but have until late January to gather the 3,200 signatures for Stegman and Bond.
4. COVID-19 pandemic continues globally, in mid-michigan
The COVID-19 pandemic raged for its first full calendar year, with 2021 deadlier in Isabella and Clare counties than 2020.
Deaths in both counties tripled in 2021, from 48 to 151 in Isabella County and from 47 to 127 in Clare County. Half of Isabella County’s total deaths were reported after March 22. Gratiot County saw a less deadly year, with deaths increasing from 85 to 151.
One-third of those Isabella County deaths came during a late-year surge in cases fueled by the Delta variant, a more transmissible version of the SARS-COV-2 virus also associated with more serious disease. Of the county’s 151 deaths, 50 were reported after Sept. 22, a month after Delta was first confirmed in mid-michigan.
The disease’s toll wasn’t just in deaths. Some survivors of 2020 infections reported that it took months for them to recover from disease symptoms, including fatigue, brain fog and loss of taste and smell.
3 . New businesses arrive in Mt. Pleasant
As the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the closing of many service industry businesses nationwide, Mt. Pleasant welcomed a larger grocery cooperative and other new retailers.
Longtime downtown Mt. Pleasant grocer Greentree recently moved to its new, larger location in the Lofts on Broadway, a mixed-use building west of Mt. Pleasant City Hall.
Greentree’s move came after a capital campaign raised funds for the new location, which includes a larger kitchen and deli, and more space for produce and other goods.
A B2 Outlet has opened, selling clothing, furniture and appliances.
In part of the former J.C. Penney building on South Mission Street, a Burlington Coat Factory is set to open this spring.
2. Teen killed at Jamestown Apartments
Two men await trial in Isabella County after the murder of a 16-year-old girl at a Union Township apartment complex in October.
Joel Patrick-dorlice Travis of Mt. Pleasant is accused of using a machete to murder Alexia Lin Riley days before Sept. 22, and is also accused of using the machete to assault a teen boy in the apartment complex’s parking lot that night.
He is scheduled to be in Isabella County Circuit Judge Sara Spencer-noggle’s Mt. Pleasant courtroom Jan. 14.
Elisha Garrazzo of Illinois is charged with tampering with evidence after a crime and accessory after the fact.
Police found Riley’s body at an apartment in the complex while investigating after a teen went to a Mt. Pleasant emergency room for treatment of a stab wound.
Travis is charged with first-degree murder, dismemberment/mutilation of a body, assault with intent to commit murder and carrying a weapon with unlawful intent.
1. Lifelong criminal enters plea in murder case
An Isabella County judge last month ordered a career criminal to remain imprisoned for life after a crime spree that left a teenager dead.
Isaiah Gary Gardenhire pleaded no contest in October to several charges relating to the June murder of Adrie Dembrowske at a home in Union Township and the unlawful imprisonment of two others at the home before he fled.
The no-contest pleas were part of a deal Gardenhire, 41, entered into before Judge Mark Duthie that saw the dismissal of a long criminal indictment that included multiple counts of rape and other violent crimes in a spree that started in the early hours of June 6. Gardenhire was accused of stabbing Dembrowske, 13, and then overpowering tenants in a nearby apartment and imprisoning them while committing multiple rapes.
He later took a car belonging to one of the tenants and drove it to Genesee County, where he surrendered to police in Flint Township a few days later.
Gardenhire faces charges elsewhere. He is accused of killing two people in Lansing, and bonded out of the Mason County Jail on a second-degree criminal sexual conduct charge involving a juvenile shortly before the spree in Isabella County.
The Mason County charge was later dropped.