Troubled Teen, Warning Signs

By Dave Franzman, Reporter

Tools

By Shannon Booth

Story Created: Apr 25, 2006 at 3:21 PM CST

Story Updated: Oct 23, 2007 at 10:51 AM CST

CEDAR RAPIDS - Two 18-year-old women are dead. And a 19-year-old young man is in custody. So were there signs he was headed towards trouble?

Case workers and probation officers may be asking themselves if they missed something about Kyle Marin who now faces charges in a much more serious felony.

But the department director says there are thousands of cases of similar juvenile crimes and no hard and fast guidelines to tell if those offenders are more likely to commit more serious acts.

As a 17 year old, Marin was found guilty of willful injury in Johnson County. Court records say he beat someone up in Coralville and threatened that person with a brick.

He also was charged as a juvenile with pointing a shotgun at someone and demanding they hand over a video counsel.

Marin spent time in a Coraville halfway house in 2005. And was sentenced to pay restitution and also serve four years of probation.

But despite the violent nature of those earlier offenses, correction officials say he did not show signs of committing murder, a charge he now faces.

Part of the issue of singling out especially dangerous people may be numbers. Right now there are 4400 people under supervision by the correction district here. 18-percent with mental health issues and 17-percent with substance abuse problems.

Marin''s situation before sunday was not radically different than many others.

Gary Hinzman is the 6th District Corrections Director. He says, "In hind sight if you put the pieces together you can say we should have been more focused on this individual, but on the other hand we have hundreds of clients with similar issues. Often times we use other agencies for assessments. We did have an assessment here. And we know he had issues."

Hinzman says federal rules prohibit discussing those issues in Marin's case. But Hinzman has lobbied for a special corrections facility for those dealing with mental health problems.

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