Chance encounter with troubled teens left waitress dead
Posted on 01/12/2003 3:59:44 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Chance encounter with troubled teens left waitress dead
The consequences of a moment
01/12/2003
The plan was to get something for nothing.
The price turned out to be a life.
When four aimless dropouts apparently decided the night after New Year's to eat and drink their fill, then skip out on the restaurant bill, it may have seemed to them an almost harmless theft.
But this time, for a lost circle of friends already familiar with the effects of bad choices and bad habits, the crime would not be victimless, and the $131.41 unpaid check became a minuscule portion of the cost.
Basic details of how and why tragedy was about to unfold remain unclear, but in that moment on that clear night, responsibility and judgment hung in the balance.
On one side, according to interviews and public records, were young people who seemed headed nowhere. On the other was a young waitress trying to do the right thing who got in their way.
 Jennifer Sanchez |
Suspecting the dine-and-ditch scam, Jennifer Sanchez rushed out into the Bennigan's parking lot to get the license-plate number of her deadbeat customers - something she'd apparently done before.
Across the dark asphalt, the 1 a.m. traffic on Irving's Airport Freeway would have been moving swiftly as the fleeing car slammed into the waitress and quickly shifted out of reverse.
Ms. Sanchez, a Grand Prairie 20-year-old working her way through college, was thrown onto the trunk of the 25-year-old Chevy Nova. The old car accelerated and braked repeatedly for about 200 feet, according to police, until Ms. Sanchez was tossed to the pavement. Hours later, after surgery, she died of head injuries.
The bronze-colored car sped off, but within 15 minutes police stopped it a couple of miles away and arrested three young suspects.
4th suspect sought
 Sarah Foust |
The fourth and oldest suspect, 26-year-old Michael John Prewitt, hadn't gotten into the car in the parking lot and instead had run from the restaurant. He has become a fugitive rather than surrender and confront a misdemeanor theft-of-service charge.
Police have said that Mr. Prewitt, who has led an itinerant existence since dropping out of high school and once worked as a waiter at another Bennigan's, is probably still in the Dallas area.
At the wheel of the getaway car that night, police say, was Sarah Haven Foust, Mr. Prewitt's girlfriend for about two years, although he is the married father of two preschoolers.
Ms. Foust turned 19 on Saturday and has repeatedly left her 4-year-old daughter to be raised by Ms. Foust's mother in Duncanville and Grand Prairie, said a relative and a former neighbor who didn't want their names used.
Ms. Foust has been charged with murder because, police said, Ms. Sanchez was deliberately thrown from atop the car. Ms. Foust also faces a drunken-driving charge. She was being held on $100,552 bail in the Dallas County jail, where she remained so emotionally overwrought, her attorneys said, that they had had trouble talking with her about the case.
Ms. Foust has a "responsibility" to the Sanchez family, the attorneys said, and was willing to meet with them, a proposal that Dallas County prosecutors called unusual.
Two other 19-year-olds also were in the car. David Wilson Thornton of Duncanville and Kortnie Ann Henson of Midlothian were arrested and charged with aggravated assault, though the charges were later reduced to theft of service.
Mr. Thornton was released on bond from the Irving jail on Tuesday. Ms. Henson was moved to the Dallas County jail, where she posted $50 - the required 10 percent of her $500 bail - for her release on Friday.
Among the questions that haven't been fully answered are whether Ms. Foust knew that Ms. Sanchez was in the car's path and then was on top of the car after she was hit; why Ms. Foust was driving the car, which belongs to the Thornton family; how much alcohol each suspect consumed; how some of the four became acquainted; and why they were together that night.
Other than arrest warrant affidavits, which said the four went to Bennigan's intending to drink and dine and then leave without paying, police investigators have released few details. Bennigan's officials and attorneys hired by Ms. Foust's mother, Carla Kelly, also have said little about the incident.
Mr. Thornton and his parents have declined to talk.
Cut off from family
 David Thornton |
The other suspects are largely cut off or alienated from parents and stepparents. Relatives and acquaintances describe them as troubled young adults with little direction and little interest in finding it.
A woman at Ms. Kelly's home, who wouldn't identify herself, said that Ms. Foust wouldn't intentionally harm someone.
"We're all very upset," she said. "This is a loved one for us. We love her."
Sarah Foust dropped out of the ninth grade after she got pregnant while living with her mother and stepfather in California, a relative said. The family moved to Duncanville in 1999.
The baby was born when Ms. Foust was 15, and the 20-year-old father was charged with statutory rape, the relative said.
The parents struggled with Ms. Foust's persistent rebelliousness and irresponsibility, said a neighbor who was friends with Ms. Kelly for three years.
The family "took real good care" of their rental house, she said, but problems consumed the home.
Police calls
 Kortnie Henson |
Police were called there a half-dozen times from January 2000 until April 2001, although no criminal charges resulted. Twice, the 16-year-old claimed an adult in the home was having sex with her or trying to. Two other incidents included her threatening her stepfather and she and her mother saying they had been struck with a belt.
"Sarah had problems, but she was not a violent girl," the neighbor said.
Another neighbor recalled giving Ms. Foust a ride a year or more ago.
"Sarah said something about how unfortunate it is that there is so much bad, so many bad things happening in the world," he said.
Ms. Foust happened to meet Mike Prewitt when he walked past the house one day. With her baby a year old, she started running away with Mr. Prewitt and leaving Ms. Kelly to mother her grandchild, the neighbor said.
"Her mother used to tell me she could not understand where Sarah's behavior came from," she said. "They tried everything.
"They were trying to get custody because they knew Sarah was unstable."
The neighbor said the stress contributed to the breakup of Ms. Kelly's marriage in April 2001, when the family split up and moved.
Her husband filed for divorce the next month, records show.
Meanwhile, Ms. Foust and Mr. Prewitt moved from home to home for as long as friends would put up with them.
"They would just mooch off of everybody," the relative said, blaming Mr. Prewitt for Ms. Foust's current predicament. "I told her to leave him. Everyone told her.
"He's a loser. If I could rope him, I would.
"If he hadn't been in her life ... she'd have been home with her mom and daughter."
Mike Prewitt was not one to live under someone else's rules.
He has a criminal record, no steady job, no car, no permanent residence, doesn't support his two children and tends to have contact with his family when he needs help or a place to stay, relatives said.
"I don't like to be around him," said his maternal grandfather, John Elliott of Kemp. "I don't like his lifestyle, to tell you the truth. He don't have no lifestyle."
Mr. Prewitt's mother died in a car accident when he was 10, the year after his father died of heart disease at age 32. The boy insisted that the disfigured woman lying in the casket could not be his mother, recalled Brenda Mathis, an aunt.
He was adopted by Connie Bosher, another aunt.
The women called their nephew a good-hearted person but one who is "always around the wrong kind of people."
As a teenager, he showed skill as an artist, and his size helped him play football at Duncanville High School. He talked about playing in college, Ms. Bosher said.
At 18, though, he quit school and abruptly left home, telling the Boshers in a note that he couldn't live by their restrictions. The truck they'd bought him was abandoned in a parking lot.
Other details of Mr. Prewitt's life seem a mystery.
Assault arrest
Relatives said he has drifted from one low-paying job to another, living wherever someone will take him in and staying until the rent money runs out or the host tires of his freeloading.
Mr. Prewitt married Kimberly Saal in June 1997 and was arrested five months later for assaulting her after a party at their Duncanville home.
Enraged when his 19-year-old wife took away his car keys, Mr. Prewitt chased her into the bathroom, shoved her head into the wall and bit her on the face, the arrest report stated. He listed his place of employment as a Red Bird-area Bennigan's, now closed.
Mr. Prewitt pleaded guilty in June 1998 and received probation, which was revoked after a year, landing Mr. Prewitt an eight-month jail sentence.
He also was once jailed for several days for purchasing alcohol for a minor in Denton County, records show.
Mrs. Prewitt filed for divorce in April 2000 but didn't follow through.
Her last known address was a mobile home park in Lake Dallas, in Denton County, but she couldn't be located.
The Prewitts tried to reconcile, Mrs. Mathis said, but when he broke off his relationship with Ms. Foust and returned to his wife last year, Ms. Foust tracked him down.
Mr. Prewitt and Ms. Foust lived together last summer in a house near his home, Mr. Elliott said, until they skipped out owing $600 in rent.
Most recently, the couple lived at an Irving motel, Mrs. Mathis said.
About two months ago, Ms. Foust called a relative to say she'd broken up with Mr. Prewitt and was working as a retail clerk.
"She was going to be a different person," the relative said.
At Christmas, though, the two were together and told Mr. Prewitt's family that they were working. Mr. Prewitt's paternal grandmother wrote checks to both of them, Mrs. Mathis said.
She said that after Ms. Sanchez was killed, Mr. Prewitt called his grandmother to say he hadn't been in the car at the time.
'Turned different'
David Thornton went to the same high school as Mike Prewitt and, like him, dropped out.
He left Duncanville High in the fall of his junior year, five years after Mr. Prewitt.
Jonathan Lofton, a neighbor and former classmate, recalled the change in Mr. Thornton from a socially active, football-playing seventh-grader to a high schooler who rarely attended class.
"I don't know what got into him, but he just turned different," Mr. Lofton said. "It doesn't surprise me that he was hanging out with the type of people who would do something like this."
Mr. Lofton said the 19-year-old sometimes drank beer from a pitcher while working on his car, and he recalled his shock last year when he saw a man "beating up this girl" in the Thornton family's front yard.
Walt Zakutney, another neighbor, said loud all-night parties at the home weren't unusual.
"I don't think the parents there knew much what he was up to," Mr. Lofton said.
Brushes with law
 Ms. Sanchez, 20, of Grand Prairie, who was buried last week, worked while attending North Lake College in Irving. (BRAD LOPER / DMN) |
She's had several brushes with the law and is known for walking long distances around Midlothian and appearing at friends' homes with requests to stay, said an acquaintance who also asked not to be identified.
A neighbor said she never seemed happy.
Ms. Henson left public school three years ago for a Cedar Hill alternative school, but it's unclear whether she ever enrolled.
In 2000, Midlothian police cited her for theft under $50 and disturbing the peace for swearing in public.
Just before Christmas that year, Ms. Henson was treated for an overdose of pills, Midlothian Fire Chief David Schrodt said.
Last year, firefighters went to a fast-food place, where she complained of a hand injury from a fight.
"She's been through some trouble. She's like any other teenager," said her stepfather. "We love Kortnie. She's a good-hearted person.
"We feel very bad for the family of the girl who died."
Daniel and Brenda Sanchez have their own questions about the four people charged in connection with their daughter's death.
"I would really like to know their childhoods, what brought them to this," Mrs. Sanchez said.
Mr. Sanchez said their daughter, who attended North Lake College in Irving with her 18-year-old sister Stephanie, probably didn't give much thought to running out to get a license number.
"You don't think of it as, 'I'm in danger,' " he said.
He said she'd done it before, although Bennigan's executive John Beck said that waiters aren't penalized for skipped tabs and are forbidden to leave a restaurant to pursue a patron.
Mrs. Sanchez said she had tried to withhold judgment about the young lives that intersected with her daughter's.
When her mind wanders to Sarah Foust, "my heart goes out to that lady in jail," she said.
Yet, one question rises above all:
"Why didn't you just stop?"
Staff writers Kendall Anderson, Selwyn Crawford and Tim Wyatt contributed to this report.
E-mail mwrolstad@dallasnews.com and smcgonigle@dallasnews.com
This is a recap of the developing story to date with some new information thrown in and background info on the players...
Quite a number of articles on this story have been posted. Here's FR Search for them:
Excerpts (new or pertinent info):
At the wheel of the getaway car that night, police say, was Sarah Haven Foust, Mr. Prewitt's girlfriend for about two years, although he is the married father of two preschoolers.
< snip .>
Among the questions that haven't been fully answered are whether Ms. Foust knew that Ms. Sanchez was in the car's path and then was on top of the car after she was hit; why Ms. Foust was driving the car, which belongs to the Thornton family; how much alcohol each suspect consumed; how some of the four became acquainted; and why they were together that night.
< snip >
Sarah Foust dropped out of the ninth grade after she got pregnant while living with her mother and stepfather in California, a relative said. The family moved to Duncanville in 1999.
The baby was born when Ms. Foust was 15, and the 20-year-old father was charged with statutory rape, the relative said.
< snip >
The family "took real good care" of their rental house, she said, but problems consumed the home.
Police were called there [the Foust’s home] a half-dozen times from January 2000 until April 2001, although no criminal charges resulted. Twice, the 16-year-old claimed an adult in the home was having sex with her or trying to. Two other incidents included her threatening her stepfather and she and her mother saying they had been struck with a belt.
< snip >
Mr. Prewitt's mother died in a car accident when he was 10, the year after his father died of heart disease at age 32. The boy insisted that the disfigured woman lying in the casket could not be his mother, recalled Brenda Mathis, an aunt.
Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my ping list!. . .don't be shy. 
Brenda and Daniel Sanchez
grieve for their daughter Jennifer,
killed Jan. 3 outside the Bennigan's
where she worked.
(BRAD LOPER / DMN)
I wonder what this neighbor's standard for violent behavour is? Just another poor, misunderstood, victim of the male gun culture.
It's sad in one way, but it's mostly disgusting.
These four have probably pulled this same stunt at countless restaurants over and over. The sad part is that some slick lawyer will get the charges reduced, some liberal judge will fall for her sob story, and five-will-get-you-ten she'll be back out on the street in a few years, calving a few more dopey illegitimate kids for the welfare system.
Yeecchhhh!
Satan: Well I tell you what,
Maybe we'll have ourselves a little Christmas, right here.
C'mon everyone, gather `round!
String up the lights and light up the tree
We're going to make some revelry
Spirits are high, so I can tell
It's Christmas time in hell!
Demons are nicer as you pass them by
There's lots of demon toys to buy
The snow is falling and all is well
It's Christmas time in hell!
There goes Jeffery Dahmer,
With a festive Christmas ham
After he has sex with it,
He'll eat up all he can.
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