STANDISH, MI — Five years ago, an Arenac County party culminated in the mysterious death of a Midland man. Though a Bay City man was charged with causing the death a little more than a month ago, those counts have been dismissed due to a dearth of evidence presented in court.
The preliminary examination of 29-year-old Spencer J. Leuenberger was held the afternoon of Tuesday, May 3, before Arenac County Judge Richard E. Vollbach Jr. Authorities on March 25 issued a warrant for Leuenberger in connection with the April 2017 death of 23-year-old Nickolas A. Newman. Leuenberger surrendered on March 28 and was arraigned on single counts of reckless driving causing death, reckless driving causing serious bodily impairment, and lying to a peace officer.
Prosecutors have not commented on what accounts for the five-year gap between Newman’s death and Leuenberger being charged.
By the end of Tuesday’s hearing, Leuenberger only remained charged with lying to a peace officer, a four-year felony.
The hearing began with Arenac County Sheriff’s Deputy Nathan Stockmeyer testifying he and other deputies went to a cabin at 948 S. Foster Road in Sims Township around 4:20 a.m. on April 9, 2017.
“We got a call for an ambulance and we didn’t really get any details on it, so we went to investigate,” Stockmeyer said. “We were met by people in the front yard, the driveway area. We later found out there was (an accident). We went in blind.”
Those who met the deputies were Leuenberger and Jillian Schwall, whose family owned the cabin at the time. The family sold the cabin in November 2019, property records show.
“I believe Mr. Leuenberger and Miss Schwall said it was a hit-and-run,” the deputy continued.
Mobile Medical Response paramedics arrived and told deputies they had found a person, identified as Newman, lying in the road, Stockmeyer said. Another woman, Nicole Everson, had also been injured in a collision of some sort and was inside the cabin when deputies arrived.
Arenac County Prosecutor Curtis G. Broughton asked the deputy to describe the scene.
“Mr. Newman … was in the roadway. He was deceased, laying on the east side of the roadway,” Stockmeyer said. Near his body deputies found an earring, a set of eyeglasses, and one or two beer cans, Stockmeyer said.
The deputy said he asked Leuenberger what had happened.
“He was accompanied with Miss Schwall and together they said that a vehicle had hit their friend,” Stockmeyer testified.
In the driveway was a bonfire pit with beer and soda cans around it. Leuenberger and Schwall bore the smell of intoxicants on their breath, and both admitted they had been drinking, Stockmeyer said.
Cross-examined by defense attorney Jeffrey J. Rupp, Stockmeyer said he could not recall if Leuenberger specifically described what happened as a hit-and-run or if he merely went along with such a statement from Schwall.
Stockmeyer said he did not advise Leuenberger of his Miranda rights when speaking with him.
Sheriff’s Deputy Isaac Handrich testified he went with Stockmeyer to the South Foster Road residence and also spoke with Leuenberger and Schwall. Only Leuenberger and Schwall were outside when deputies arrived, though they said a party had taken place earlier, which Newman and Everson had attended.
Schwall was the one who had called 911, Handrich said. Leuenberger said he had heard a “thump,” went to the road, and found Newman.
Handrich broke the news to Leuenberger and Schwall that Newman was deceased. Prosecutor Broughton asked how they reacted to this.
“I recall he was pacing back and forth a little bit,” Handrich said. “He had his hands on his head. She seemed distressed.”
Questioned by Rupp, Handrich said Schwall spoke more than Leuenberger did.
Judge Vollbach then asked the deputy if Leuenberger and Schwall were both speaking. He said they were, agreeing with each other’s statements.
Deputy Timothy Robbins, a traffic crash reconstructionist who worked as such with the Michigan State Police before retiring, testified he went to scene a few hours after his peers initially responded. On arrival, he walked through the scene without speaking with deputies or witnesses to get a clear, unbiased impression of the evidence, he said.
The collision’s debris field contained Newman’s body, beer cans, woman-style eyeglasses, and an earring, Robbins said.
“Something didn’t seem right,” the deputy said. “Number one, there’s no car debris. That’s one of the first things I look for.”
The field diverged in two directions, with the earring and eyeglasses going to the right and Newman’s body going to the left, Robbins said. This indicated there were two people involved, Robbins said.
“It just seemed like something didn’t fit the original call. It took us some time to figure that out though,” Robbins said.
Leuenberger provided Robbins with a written account of what happened.
“None of the stories made sense, if you will,” Robbins said.
Through his investigation, Robbins came up with a sequence of events.
“It looked like the vehicle was moving southbound on Foster Road from U.S. 23 toward the lake. (Newman) had somehow come out of or off on the vehicle’s driver’s side. (Everson) came off the passenger side. The individual debris came off of those parties.”
Everson was moved into the cabin before deputies arrived. Having suffered a skull fracture and road rash, she was taken from the scene to McLaren Bay Region hospital in Bay City, Robbins said.
Newman’s most significant injuries were to his head. He had no breaks to his leg bones, which are common when a vehicle strikes a pedestrian, Robbins said.
“It’s consistent with these two people riding in the back of a pickup truck and falling out,” he said. “That’s the most likely event, that they were on or in the back of a truck and fell out.”
Questioned by Rupp, Robbins said the evidence was not consistent with a pedestrian being struck by a vehicle moving at a high speed. Rupp asked if it were possible Newman could have been sideswiped by a vehicle. Robbins replied it was unlikely, since there were two injured people, who would have had to have been sideswiped by opposite sides of the same vehicle.
“Is it possible? Anything’s possible. Is it likely? Absolutely not,” Robbins said.
Newman’s body bore rubber marks from apparent vehicle tires. Robbins was unable to match the marks with tires of two trucks still present at the scene. As such, he could not identify the particular vehicle involved in the incident.
Broughton then called civilian witness Kyle Anderson to the stand. Anderson testified he did not know Newman or Leuenberger but had been at a bar on April 15, 2017, when Leuenberger walked in. He said others at the bar were talking about the April 9 crash.
“They were shocked he was at the bar after a series of events that had happened prior to this,” Anderson said. He said he snapped a photo of Leuenberger at the bar but never heard him say anything.
After Anderson’s brief testimony, Vollbach asked Broughton if he’d be able to meet his burden of establishing probable cause. Broughton replied he would be unable to do so.
Vollbach then dismissed without prejudice the counts of reckless driving causing death and reckless driving causing serious bodily impairment. Dismissing a charge without prejudice means prosecutors can theoretically refile it.
Broughton then asked the judge to bind over the remaining charge of lying to a peace officer to Circuit Court for trial. Rupp opposed this.
Vollbach said the prosecution had “very barely met the threshold of probable cause” that Leuenberger knowingly made false statements to police and bound the case over to the higher court. He then offered a word of admonishment.
“I’m going to say this, probably more than I should,” he began. “This is a horrific thing that happened, one way or another. There’s a lot of evidence that makes this look or appear that this was not a hit-and-run. If someone got a pass because this is a five-year-old case and the evidence, today at least, just isn’t there, I hope there’s some soul searching.”
Leuenberger, who is free on bond, is to appear for a pretrial conference at 9:30 a.m. on May 25. Schwall on the morning of Wednesday, May 4, was arraigned on one count of lying to a peace officer and released on a $10,000 personal recognizance bond.
Newman and Leuenberger both graduated from Bay City Western High School in 2011. At the time of his death, Newman was working at 3 S Construction Company of Midland.
“He loved to hunt, camp, fish and snowboard,” his obituary states.
Read more:
Bay City man charged with causing friend’s 2017 death in Arenac County
Bay County man victim of fatal hit-and-run, police have no suspects
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