Battle Ground cat killers released early from juvenile detention

By Emily Sinovic, KATU News Published: Sep 13, 2012 at 8:31 PM PDT
Battle Ground cat killers released early from juvenile detention »Play Video

VANCOUVER, Wash. -- A pair of Battle Ground teens who confessed to shooting as many as 100 neighborhood cats last year were allowed to leave a juvenile detention facility today.

The teens were in a juvenile detention facility in Olympia since they confessed last year.

The teens -- Jaren Koistinen and Mitchell Kangas -- wanted to return home for their senior year of high school, but they'll still be monitored electronically for the remainder of their sentence, which ends Oct. 27. After the judge said the teens have been rehabilitated, a stipulation was placed on their release -- they're essentially only allowed to be at home or at school and little else.

The boys are now 17 and 18 and may look like quiet kids, but neighbors argued that they're still the same kids who loaded up a rifle and shot at their pets and their homes.

"I just want to say I don't think they've realized how this has impacted me," said one neighbor who didn't want to be identified. "I can't sit in front of my window. I get scared when a car drives down my street."

That neighbor recalled how the teens targeted her cats and fired bullets right into her house on two separate occasions.

"That bullet hit three feet from my head in my house," she said. "Sunday after church, they picked up those guns and came to my house -- four weeks apart. After church they did that."

In Clark County Superior Court, Judge Rich Melnick sympathized with pet owners, but told them he believes Koistinen and Kangas have changed.

"I'm not excusing what they did," the judge said.

Melnick pointed to multiple letters from counselors and teachers during the past year that talked about the progress of the teens. Those counselors and teachers are confident the teens won't re-offend and recommended they go home early to finish their sentence.

"I mean, I've never seen letters from DSHS from group homes," Melnick said. "Have you? Where the actual people from DSHS are actually recommending change in circumstance."

Melnick said he's never seen anything like that in his 31 years of experience. He simply does not believe the teens are a threat to the community.

"The only evaluations that we had show that they committed really, really poor judgment and criminals acts, but they weren't sociopaths," Melnick said.

Koistinen and Kangas refused to be interviewed after the court proceeding and only said they are ready to move forward and to go home.