Teen who menaced girl gets 12 years

EVERETT — David Thomas Lengenfelder had one last letter for the 15-year-old girl he has terrified for the past year, which he read in Snohomish County Superior Court yesterday.

He said he loved her and that the image of her "beautiful face crying in fear" last month when he held her hostage at knifepoint in her Lakewood High School English class, was "burned in (his) mind."

Now that he was going to prison, he said, she wouldn't have to be scared anymore.

"You can now hang out with your friends," the 17-year-old said, reading from pages he held awkwardly because of the handcuffs around his wrists. "You won't have to let (a family member) tag along behind you."

Judge Thomas Wynne sentenced Lengenfelder yesterday to 12 years in prison for first-degree kidnapping and two counts of second-degree assault — charges to which the Arlington teen pleaded guilty earlier this month. Lengenfelder was prosecuted as an adult.

The sentence — at the high end of the standard range — was what prosecutors requested, and the girl's father said yesterday that he thought it was a just punishment.

But the girl's father said he worried about his daughter's sense of safety nonetheless.

"I suspect it is not going too far to say she will never get over this," he said during the hearing. "Despite what Mr. Lengenfelder (said), she fears for her life to this day. She wakes up with nightmares still."

His daughter did not attend the sentencing, and her parents did not initially intend to speak. But her father decided to address the court after listening to Lengenfelder's words.

"To me it was a very disturbing, bizarre letter," he said after the hearing.

Lengenfelder's father, David S. Lengenfelder, spoke at the sentencing, too, saying that his son always had been a basically good kid who participated in wrestling and the chess club, didn't skip school and didn't lie.

"But there's something wrong," he said. "He's sick in some way."

The teen has admitted to walking into the girl's class around 9:30 a.m. May 13 armed with two butcher knives. He ordered the teacher and the other students to the floor, according to charging papers, and told the girl to go into a corner of the room.

Lengenfelder had the knives raised about head high and pointed at the girl and a second girl who had gone to comfort her, when the school resource officer arrived in the classroom, charging papers say. The officer, Snohomish County sheriff's Deputy Mike Anderson, aimed his gun at Lengenfelder and told him to drop the knives, which Lengenfelder did. He was taken into custody, and no one was hurt.

Lengenfelder later told authorities he merely wanted to apologize to the girl for harassing her in the past and to assure her he meant no harm, according to charging papers.

He had anonymously dropped six violent and sexually explicit letters in the girl's locker earlier in the school year, which led to his expulsion and a harassment charge in juvenile court. A school psychologist judged there to be "an extremely high likelihood" that Lengenfelder would kill someone unless he received intensive counseling, according to prosecutors.

He pleaded guilty to the charge, and was under house arrest awaiting sentencing when he took a bus to the school last month. His younger brother, who gave him advice on writing the letters, also served time in juvenile detention for harassment.

The "amount of terror he caused ... will (continue to) have quite an impact" on the girl and others in the class, Deputy Prosecutor Remy Leonard said.

Lengenfelder's lawyer, Bill Jaquette, asked for an exceptionally low sentence, saying his client was young and has a mental condition that affected his behavior. After his client was sentenced, Jaquette said, Lengenfelder wanted to send to the victim's family the letter that he read in court yesterday, and asked the judge if he could do so.

Wynne denied the request, after noting that the girl's parents, seated in the courtroom, were shaking their heads.

"I think it needs to stop here," he said.

Janet Burkitt: 206-515-5689 or jburkitt@seattletimes.com.