By Jordan Wilcox
Assistant Publisher
More information has been released about the substitute teacher whose unsettling comments led to a shelter in place order at South Haven’s Baseline Middle School on Tuesday, September 10th. He was involved in more altercations, been charged with new crimes, and his name is now public.
On the morning of September 10th, Douglas Lee Bellenger II, a 25-year-old from Fennville, sat down with a class of students at South Haven’s Baseline Middle School.
He began the class with discussions about politics and terrorism, but quickly got off topic and started threatening to “bomb the border” and deport a Hispanic student back to Mexico.
These comments made the students very uncomfortable, so Bellenger warned them not to speak out against his rant.
“’I will come to your house and kill you if you snitch.” an eighth grader in his class said to FOX 17. “He starts, like, talking about if we were to go snitch, he would kill us and let our bodies, like, rot for four days and then put us in a metal crate and then bomb the ship it’s on, so we would sink and drown.”
Another parent who spoke with FOX 17, says he even went so far as to tell another he knows where they live, and he’ll blow up their house.
Other reports say he also threatened to kill multiple students and do unspeakable acts to the girls.
After class let out, one of the students was thankfully able to find an administrator and let them know that the sub was having some uncomfortable conversations.
Bellenger was called down to the assistant principal’s office, and as soon as he got there, he began talking over him, demanding to know who complained.
He was then asked to leave the premises, but instead continued to be argumentative, and told the principal to “sit down!”
The school threatened to involve law enforcement, prompting Bellenger to finally leave.
After his departure, Baseline Middle School issued a shelter in place order out of safety for the students and began informing other districts of Bellenger’s actions.
Meanwhile, during the lunch rush at Allegan’s Village Inn Restaurant, patrons began to notice an unusual banging noise coming from the restaurant’s restroom.
Owner, Dave Hiemstra went to check on the sound and found Bellenger running out of the men’s room with a claw hammer.
“I checked the ladies’ room, there was no one in there, started heading to the men’s room, and that’s when he came out holding a claw hammer,” Hiemstra told News Channel 3. “He busted the mirror, the vanity, the toilet, everything,”
Once out, Bellenger ran through the restaurant, wielding his hammer and terrifying patrons of a possible attack.
“He is in there busting that up, he could have attacked any one of us,” Hiemstra said to News Channel 3
After Bellenger exited the restaurant, he took off in his truck, heading northbound on M-40.
Hiemstra promptly alerted the Allegan County Sheriff’s Office, and shortly after, so did Douglas Lee Bellenger Sr.
Bellenger Sr. was unaware of his son’s actions at the Village Inn but was instead calling because of an earlier confrontation they had.
Allegedly, after being fired from Baseline Middle School, and before damaging the Village Inn, Bellenger stopped home to see his father.
In a fit of rage from his recent firing, he pushed his father up against a fridge, and held him there for a short while, before releasing him.
During this altercation, Bellenger supposedly made several concerning comments to his father, about wanting to harm him, and harm others.
Armed with this new information, and knowing that he was heading northbound, deputies surmised that he might be heading towards another town where he we frequently served as a substitute teacher – Hopkins.
Deputies quickly informed Hopkins Public Schools of a suspicious individual heading towards town, which prompted all three schools – elementary, middle, high – to also go into a short shelter in place.
The shelter in place ended ten minutes later, though, when that was proved to be a false assumption, and Bellenger was arrested by Allegan County Sheriff’s deputies.
On duty deputies spotted a vehicle matching Bellenger’s description heading westbound on M-89 near 49th Street and going 70-mph in the 55-mph zone.
They repeatedly commanded the driver to stop, roll down his window, and place his hands outside the vehicle, but Bellenger refused to comply.
Eventually he did step outside, and deputies were able to apprehend him.
While in custody he told deputies that during a previous visit to the Village Inn, someone had “peed in his chicken sandwich” and he “gave them until September to correct it.” They didn’t, so he destroyed their bathroom and “made them pay.”
On September 12th, he was criminally charged with one count of domestic violence, and one count of malicious destruction of a building.
Hiemstra also plans to press charges for the destruction of his restaurant’s bathroom and both school districts have now permanently banned him from their property and removed him from EduStaff database. – A third-party provider districts use to screen and hire substitutes.
Bellenger was lodged at the Allegan County Jail but paid a $1,000 bond on Sept. 25th.
He’s due back in court this Friday, October 18th, for a pre-trial.
