Stab suspect ordered held at Charleston

BANGOR – A 17-year-old boy who told police that he wants to follow in the footsteps of his two brothers – both convicted of murder in separate killings and serving prison time – was ordered Tuesday to be returned to a juvenile corrections facility after he was charged with last weekend’s stabbing of another teen.

District Court Judge Jessie Gunther ordered Aaron M. Heath, a transient, to be returned to the Mountain View Youth Development Center in Charleston until the teenager’s arraignment, scheduled for May 24.

The order came during Heath’s brief appearance in the Bangor court for a detainment hearing, the first step in the proceedings against him.

Heath, already sentenced to a juvenile facility for arson, is being charged with attempted murder and elevated aggravated assault in connection with Saturday’s stabbing of a 16-year-old boy in the doorway of an Essex Street apartment.

The victim was stabbed in the abdomen, and investigators were told that he lost a kidney and suffered a laceration to his liver, according to court documents.

The injured teen, reported on Monday as being in stable condition, was transferred from St. Joseph Hospital to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, according to police. An EMMC representative said Tuesday evening that she had no information about him.

Dressed in a gray, short-sleeve shirt, baggy tan pants and black and white sneakers and with his legs manacled, Heath said no more than the required “yes” when Gunther asked whether he understood his rights and the charges filed against him.

Escorted back to Penobscot County Jail with his hands handcuffed to a chain around his waist, Heath would not comment on what happened or why.

But as they investigated Saturday’s stabbing and linked Heath to it, police said they discovered some disturbing information: that Heath planned to repeat the crimes for which his two older brothers had been convicted.

Carl Wayne Heath and Smokey Heath Jr. were both sentenced to 40 years in prison in 2002 for separate killings. In both cases, a hammer was used as a weapon.

Earlier this month, a Portland police officer told Bangor police that he had dealt with Aaron Heath in the past year and that the teenager carried with him newspaper clippings of his brothers’ homicides.

“Aaron told the Portland officer that as soon as he turns 18, he’s going to get a hammer and join his brothers in prison,” Bangor police Officer Jason McAmbley stated in court documents. Heath turns 18 next month.

At the time of his arrest on Saturday, Heath was on leave from Mountain View, where he was serving time for convictions on three counts of arson out of Cumberland County. No information about those cases was available Tuesday.

Heath was supposed to be attending a juvenile offender aftercare program while on leave, but failed to show up, Penobscot County District Attorney R. Christopher Almy said Tuesday.

A warrant was issued for Heath’s arrest. The youth was a ward of the state in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, Almy said.

The district attorney said Heath’s history and past expressed intentions will be brought up at a hearing, still to be scheduled, to determine whether to charge him as an adult or juvenile.

“He has made statements in the past that basically he’s following in the footsteps of his brothers,” Almy said. “That evidence will be important in deciding whether he’ll be bound over as an adult.”

Investigators still are looking into the stabbing, and a Bangor police official said Tuesday that the knife used in the stabbing had not yet been recovered.

As police investigators were looking for Heath on Saturday, Bangor police Detective Brent Beaulieu spoke with the victim in the emergency room at St. Joseph Hospital.

The youth described the surprise confrontation at the doorway of the apartment where he was living and said that the stabbing may have been retribution for a fight he had had months earlier, according to Beaulieu.

Heath knocked on the door of the Essex Street apartment building about 1:15 a.m. Saturday, asking for the other teenager, according to authorities.

When the 16-year-old went to the door, Heath told him that they had acquaintances in common and that he wanted to meet him.

Heath then held out his hand for a handshake, and after the 16-year-old extended his hand, he “felt a stab to his abdomen,” according to court documents.

He quickly shut the door and went to the living room, where he sat down, then went to the floor, according to the documents.

Heath was found later Saturday by police, hiding beneath a pile of clothes in a back room of a Center Street apartment.