Coldwater man sent back to prison after threatening man with knife
BRANCH COUNTY — After 23 years in prison for attempted murder and three years on parole, a Coldwater man will go back to the Michigan Department of Corrections to serve two to six years for a felonious assault, again with a knife.
Vincent Beniquez, 64, told victim Ricky Hankins, “Keep my name out of your mouth, or I’ll kill you.”
Beniquez told Circuit Judge Bill O’Grady in court on Monday, “I didn’t mean it. It was said in the heat of the moment.”
Elizabeth Hankins had asked Ricky to meet her outside Beniquez's Coldwater Marshall Street apartment on May 24 after she believed Beniquez shot out the back window of her car.
Prosecutor Zack Stempien said Beniquez “ran over to (the Hankins) with a knife in his hand pointed at Hankins.” The prosecutor disputed Beniquez, who said he was over 10 feet away. “He was standing right in front of (Ricky Hankins) a few inches away with the knife pointed out. (Hankins) was trying to back up. He continued to try to come at them.”
O’Grady pointed to the Beniquez's 1995 conviction for attempted murder. Beniquez responded, “I’m not perfect.”
On Oct. 24, 1994, a friend, Roy Gene Hankins, called Beniquez to come to The Commerical, the bar at the south end of Monroe Street, where he was in an argument with Kevin English. Two tables of friends were drinking and arguing with the other group.
The bartender told both parties to leave. English’s mother and a friend came to drive English home.
As his mother was trying to get English into his truck, Hankins and Beniquez came out of the bar with knives in their hands. Patricia English went over to them, telling them to put down the knives.
As she went back to the truck, her son went over to the two men.
Patricia English saw Beniquez stab her son multiple times. She ran to him, screaming, “No. No. No,” as Hankins and Beniquez fled. She held a towel to his bleeding stomach.
At the emergency room, the surgeon said English suffered 11 stab wounds to his chest, arm and stomach where his intestines were hanging out.
Coldwater Police Sgt. Jerry Van Den Hout interviewed Beniquez after recovering the knife from a rooftop where a female friend threw it.
The sergeant testified Beniquez told him he was protecting Roy Gene Hankins from the larger English, a boxer and “professional tough man.” Beniquez said the knife came around English, and Beniquez grabbed it. “He started stabbing the big guy in front of him. He kept stabbing and stabbing,” the officer testified.
Tammy Hankins, who had left the bar with Beniquez after the stabbing, told the court in 1995 for sentencing Beniquez had “a violent and destructive life.” She said by 1994, Beniquez had already spent half his life in prison or jail.
Records indicated Beniquez was an orphan who grew up in foster care in the New York City area. His first conviction was at age 12. In 1983, at age 25, he was convicted of assault causing serious injury in Richmond County, N.Y. He served seven years.
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A former girlfriend said after she broke off their relationship months before the stabbing, Beniquez assaulted her. He told her, “Do you know how easy it would be to kill you?”
Outside the courtroom, where he was sentenced to 90 days for domestic violence, he threatened to kill her until corrections officers pulled him away.
The Michigan Parole Board did not consider it safe to let him out of prison until 2019 at age 61. His parole ended in 2020. Beniquez will be eligible for parole again in November 2024.
— Contact Don Reid: dReid@Gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @DReidTDR.
This article originally appeared on Coldwater Daily Reporter: Coldwater man sent back to prison after threatening man with knife
