ATTEMPTED MURDER SUSPECT PLEADS NOT GUILTY, HELD ON $100,000 BAIL
ST. ALBANS: One of the suspects in a September stabbing just off Hathaway Point Road in St. Albans Town was arraigned in Franklin County Criminal Court on Monday after returning from Allen County, Indiana this week.
According to court records, 22 year-old Alexis Lesage, of Essex, entered a not guilty plea on one count of attempted second-degree murder, and one count of simple assault on Monday in Franklin County Criminal Court in St. Albans.
Lesage is suspected of being an accomplice to Malachi Buswell, 36, who allegedly stabbed Owen Pelkey in the chest at the Hathaway Point boat launch just before midnight on September 12th.
When police responded to the boat launch, just before midnight, the officers found a male victim, identified as Owen Pelkey, and two females, identified as Paige Demarse, 17, and Taylor Bushey, 18. According to the witnesses and the victim, the three went to the boat launch to “vibe,” which is often translated to hanging out and jamming to music for the older generations reading this.
The three people all told police in separate interviews that they spent 10 or 15 minutes in the parking lot of the boat launch before preparing to leave. The three also told police that there was a another vehicle in the parking lot when they got there, with no lights on, and it appeared there was nobody in the vehicle. As the victim and two witnesses began to leave, the other vehicle began to drive over toward them with no lights on.
One of the witnesses told police that Pelkey stopped to see what the other vehicle wanted, and that’s when the altercation happened. The male suspect, later identified as Buswell, stabbed Pelkey while Pelkey remained seated in his own vehicle. The suspects allegedly then went back to the vehicle to get a double barreled shotgun to shoot the three in Pelkey’s vehicle, but did not end up shooting any of them, instead just pushed the gun into the face of Pelkey.
Just before leaving, the female suspect, later identified as Lesage, stole the keys to Pelkey’s vehicle, according to the two female witnesses.
The witnesses told police that the suspects left in a silver Ford Escape, the model year in the early 2000s.
With little to go on, police went back to their St. Albans station, where Detective Sergeant Francis McCarthy discovered that there was a “be on the lookout” for a stolen vehicle from South Burlington, and that vehicle matched the description of the vehicle the suspects fled the scene with.
Through contact with South Burlington Police, the St. Albans Detective learned that the suspect in the South Burlington case was Buswell.
According to police, a prior investigation on the 11th of September had linked Buswell and Lesage, who were partners at the time. Police now believed that Buswell and Lesage were the suspects they were looking for, as they were a match to the description of the suspects from a few hours earlier.
The vehicle, owned by Jason Sizen, was reported stolen to police in South Burlington about two hours after the stabbing in St. Albans was reported to police. Sizen told police that the vehicle was stolen from Lime Kiln Road, and that he suspected Buswell had stolen it, as Buswell had a spare set of keys to the vehicle.
Sizen also told officers that the registration plates on the vehicle would not match the Ford Escape, but would likely come back to his old vehicle.
Three days after the stabbing, St. Albans Police received a call from DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office in Indiana, informing them that the vehicle was located in Indiana, torched, and that Buswell and Lesage were both in custody.
According to a report by the DeKalb Sheriff’s Department, a 911 caller had reported a vehicle that was “all over the road,” and when police caught up to the vehicle, the Vermont license plate did not match the vehicle it was on. The Deputy pulled the couple over, ran the VIN number of the Volvo the two suspects were in and found that VIN number came back to a car stolen in Indiana earlier that evening.
The owner of the Volvo gave consent to police in Indiana to search the vehicle, which resulted in police locating 17 license plates from Vermont, New Hampshire, Colorado, Indiana, and California. The Deputies also found multiple identification cards, as well as guns, a suitcase of clothes, pants that appeared to have blood stains on them, a hunting knife that appeared to have blood on it, and an assortment of vehicle keys.
The pair is being held on charges in Indiana, and are suspected of being responsible for the arson of the vehicle stolen from Vermont, that vehicle was discovered in Allen County Indiana.
On September 18th, police met with one of the witnesses in the stabbing case, showing the witness eight photos of suspects. The witness identified Lesage in one of the photos, positively identifying her as the female suspect in the stabbing incident. When police did the same with the other witness, they removed the photos of the Lesage, and only showed her the other seven photos. That witness told police that none of the seven were the suspect.
Judge Martin Maley ordered Lesage to have conditions in the case, regardless of release, which include her not to have any contact with the victim, witnesses, or co-defendant, and if she does meet bail, to only be released into the custody of a responsible adult, approved by the court, abide by a 24 hour curfew, and not possess any deadly weapons, including knives.
Both suspects are being held on $100,000 bail pending trial. Buswell is being held at Northwest Correctional Center, while Lesage is being held at the state’s only women’s facility, the Chittenden County Correctional Center.
