Pingree Grove: Schaumburg resident pleads guilty to shooting into house

A Schaumburg resident pleaded guilty Friday to shooting a house in Pingree Grove.

Charlotte Hethcoat, 19, pleaded guilty to reckless discharge of a firearm. Hethcoat accepted a sentence of 24 months of probation and four days in jail.

On Sept. 26, 2022, Hethcoat fired a rifle in the backyard of a home, a Kane County prosecutor told Judge David Kliment. The bullets went through a fence and into multiple walls of a house in the 41W0-99 block of Oak Street.

There were people in the house, but they were not injured.

Pingree Grove police at the time said the shooting was “the result of inexperience with firearms and unlawful and negligent target practice.”

Hethcoat also was charged in January 2023 with aggravated kidnapping for allegedly imprisoning a woman in a closet on the patio of Hethcoat’s apartment.

Schaumburg police alleged that Hethcoat and a co-defendant told a woman that her life was in danger and that she would face fines, the loss of her children or imprisonment if she did not comply with their requests.

The defendants provided fake contracts from a fictional company that the woman signed, authorities said. They then installed cameras in the woman’s home and gave the woman a fake tracking device, which they told her she was required to wear.

They told her the device cost $500, and when she was unable to pay, they told her she had to report to “company jail” at Hethcoat’s apartment. They made her change into jail-style clothing and put her in the closet overnight.

The next day, the woman told her boss what had happened, and the boss gave her $500. But when she tried to pay the defendants, Hethcoat allegedly told the woman that because the payment was late, she would have to stay in the “jail” another night.

The disposition of that case was not available Friday morning.

https://www.dailyherald.com/20240105/crime/schaumburg-resident-pleads-guilty-to-shooting-into-house-in-pingree-grove/