A Plainwell man admitted to charges after causing a standoff with police on Easter Sunday.
Michael John Vanderberg, 27, was in court Monday, Oct. 23, and entered three guilty pleas in three different files.
Vanderberg said that he’d been at a friend’s house on Harmony Lane in Otsego Township Tuesday, April 18, and a stolen gun had been in the house.
“I didn’t steal it,” he said. “The police got called and I wouldn’t come out when the police came because I had warrants.
“I locked myself in the house with the gun. I eventually came out and gave myself up.”
The police response included the Allegan County Sheriff’s Office tactical team and the department’s armored vehicle. They ordered everyone inside to come out through a loudspeaker and everyone but Vanderberg complied.
When Judge Margaret Zuzich Bakker suggested that might not constitute a guilty plea, Vanderberg’s lawyer, Robert Champion, asked him if he’d touched the gun at any time.
Vanderberg said he did and Bakker accepted the pleas to possession of a firearm by a felon and assaulting/resisting/obstructing police.
In exchange for the guilty plea, Allegan County prosecutors agreed to drop a second count of assaulting/resisting/obstructing police and one count of felony firearms.
In the second case, Vanderberg pleaded guilty to soliciting another to obtain pseudoephedrine to make methamphetamine.
“I was hanging out with a couple friends,” Vanderberg said, “A female showed up and said she’d like to make some money.
“I didn’t ask her to do it, but I gave her a ride to the store and gave her $10 for it.”
In exchange for that guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to charge Vanderberg as a second habitual offender, not a fourth habitual offender.
In the third file, Vanderberg admitted to absconding while on bond when he didn’t show up to a plea hearing in the case scheduled for July 17.
“I had a big drug issue, I was addicted to meth, I wasn’t thinking clear,” he said. “I didn’t want to leave my kids when I’d already spent six years in prison.”
As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors agreed not to object to Vanderberg being screened for a special Michigan Department of Corrections program. Because of the firearm charge, his lawyers said, he wasn’t eligible for the Allegan County Drug Court or Methamphetamine Diversion Program.
In addition, all the charges in a fourth file were dropped.
Vanderberg was scheduled for sentencing Tuesday, Dec. 5, at 9 a.m. in Allegan County Circuit Court.
Contact Dan Pepper at dpepper@allegannews.com or at (269) 673-5534.
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