A Crown Point man was sentenced to a three-year split term Monday for trapping a woman in a car.
Nyle Fuerstenberg, 31, pleaded guilty to criminal confinement, a Level 5 felony. He will serve two years in prison and one year in Lake County Community Corrections.
Hobart Police responded just before 3 a.m. Sept. 1, 2023, to the 300 block of W. 3rd Street. The victim told police she went to a couple of bars after she got off work. Fuerstenberg, her ex-boyfriend, tried to follow her into a second bar, but the bouncer blocked him.
“I am here to see that (expletive),” Fuerstenberg told the man.
After she left the bar at closing time and started driving home, Fuerstenberg ran into the street, tried to open her door, then started jumping on the hood. She drove back to her apartment. He called her and she went to go pick him up, court documents show.
As soon as he got inside, he started punching her, grabbed her hair to keep her inside. They switched seats, he drove back, then took off in her vehicle.
The woman wrote she still struggled with the trauma every day, according to the letter Deputy Prosecutor Jacquelyn Altpeter read in court.
Defense lawyer Ben Murphy said Fuerstenberg “regrets what happened” and noted he had been drinking that day. He asked for probation.
Altpeter said it was “appropriate” for Fuerstenberg to go to prison, saying he had a history of domestic violence.
Fuerstenberg said he was “appalled” at his actions and it had been “very helpful” to spend time in jail to think.
Judge Salvador Vasquez told him the case was “extremely problematic” because it was a new case with a new woman. He was someone who “abuses women.”
Fuerstenberg was on bond for a May 2020 rape case. With the new charges, his probation had been revoked. He was sentenced Monday to time served for the remaining 18 months of that sentence.
In that case, he had pleaded guilty to criminal confinement with bodily injury.
The victim, a different woman, said he attacked her at the Clarion Inn in Merrillville.
“You are going to die tonight,” he told her. “You aren’t going to see your kid.”
Later, she alleged he had sex with her while she was asleep.
mcolias@post-trib.com