2014: Arson, murder, and a tornado gripped Knox

Enterprise file photo — Marcello Iaia

Wiping tears after reading his statement, Kenneth Fortuin of Knox, stood beside his lawyer, Cheryl Coleman, as he was sentenced for arson on June 19.

KNOX — In its beginning, middle, and end, 2014 brought headline-grabbing events to Knox, while it was marked in public by a drawn-out exchange toward revising the town’s vision to center on commercial zoning.

A destructive force of nature brought down electric lines, trucks, and trees in May, when a powerful tornado came through the edge of town, spending most of its force in Schenectady County and leaving no one dead.

Causing emotional damage, two high-profile crimes occurred in Knox — one fatal, the other destructive — with domestic strain that boiled over into arson and murder. Kenneth Fortuin burned his home in February, blocking firefighters and police. And, in December, 5-year-old Kenneth White was slain in his trailer home.

Late in 2013, the owner of Hitmans Towing was ticketed for operating the business in an area zoned for residential uses. Now, the town’s citation of Hitmans is scheduled to see arguments before a jury this month after the trial was postponed several times.

The drawn-out process of governing — including zoning, planning, seeking proposals for the town's first-ever solar energy, and getting a new coat of paint for the historic Saddlemire Homestead — was punctuated by the sudden spotlights cast on the rural town when Kenneth Fortuin, a Knox contractor, was holed up on his property, which he let burn in the early hours of a cold February morning.

More recently, Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple called on town officials to look at the condition of a trailer where 5-year-old Kenneth White lived and, police say, was killed by the hands of his 19-year-old cousin, Tiffany VanAlstyne. She was charged on Dec. 19 with second-degree murder after White's body was found buried in shallow snow across the road, from the home they shared with others.

The Knox Fire District closed the trailer after the murder case, which will continue to hold public attention into the new year as VanAlstyne's charge is due for review by a grand jury and questions remain about what led to White's death.

Domestic murder

The Berne-Knox-Westerlo kindergartener was curious and loved the comic hero Spider-Man for his shooting webs, recalled people who knew him.

His death on Dec. 18 by strangulation was coupled with blunt-force trauma to his head, Apple told reporters as the murder charge was announced. White had been expected along with dozens of other Hilltown children at a Christmas party hosted by the sheriff’s office two days after his death.

White lived with his twin sister, Cheyanne, and his 4-year-old sister, Christine, in the trailer on Thacher Park Road with his aunt and legal guardian, Brenda VanAlstyne, police said; with him in the trailer were Kenneth VanAlstyne, an unidentified 18-year-old man who Brenda VanAlstyne apparently looked after, and Brenda’s daughter, Tiffany.

White’s father, Jayson White, from Massachusetts, was denied by an Albany County family court judge when he requested custody of the two remaining girls since the murder. White’s mother, Christine, lives in Amsterdam.

An Amber Alert issued on Thursday, Dec. 18, was spurred by Tiffany VanAlstyne's report that two men in black ski masks broke into the home that day and abducted White as she was restrained, which authorities later said was false.

A huge crowd came to light candles in a vigil for White on Dec. 22, standing in front of the school he and VanAlstyne had attended.

At her arraignment on Dec. 19, VanAlstyne appeared expressionless and looked downward.

When asked about her medications, VanAlstyne said she takes lithium for bipolar disorder. She named another drug she said she takes for her thyroid, and said she thought she also took birth-control pills.

“I take something at night. I don’t know what for,” she said.

A home left burning

A well-known building contractor, the 49-year-old Kenneth Fortuin had a following of supporters that collected money for his legal defense after he was arrested for setting his house ablaze and, while wielding a gun, preventing emergency responders from getting to the scene to fight the flames nearly a year ago.

Fortuin’s ex-wife, Andrea Fortuin, meanwhile, said at his sentencing that she had been forced to close one of her two yoga studios as a result of the financial loss his crime had caused her, as they both owned the house and were finalizing a protracted divorce.

Kenneth Fortuin criticized his ex-wife at his sentencing in June, as did his attorney, Cheryl Coleman, who said Andrea Fortuin was not a victim “legally or in reality.”

As he was sentenced to two-and-a-third to seven years in state prison for arson, a felony, and to a conditional discharge for obstructing firefighting operations, a misdemeanor, one side of the court’s gallery was packed and applauding for him.

Shortly after Fortuin was taken away from court, Coleman said she expected him to serve at most a year in jail.

 “I know what I did that night was wrong," he read from a tearful statement in court. "I was dealing with a lot of pain and anger,” he said. Reading a victim’s impact statement during the proceeding, Andrea Fortuin said she had to support their two children without help from Kenneth and that they detailed their long endurance of his bouts of rage and drinking.

She described the “betrayal we all felt as the community rallied around this man, holding a benefit to pay for his legal fees while I was now on the brink of bankruptcy and forced to pay mortgage payments on a house that no longer existed, a house that he destroyed, while unsure of how I would be able to support my kids.”

Andrea Fortuin noted after the sentencing that she “did not reap any reward from insurance.” She said her settlement, in the end, is exactly the amount stated on the divorce agreement that Kenneth Fortuin signed on Nov. 13, 2013; he was to have paid it in 90 days, at which point he would have owned the farm “free and clear,” she said. Their divorce was finalized on Feb. 7, 2014, two days after he set fire to the house and four outbuildings they jointly owned.

Andrea Fortuin said her ex-husband often broke things and that she had long worked to protect his reputation.

She detailed his threatening to shoot farm animals and, when she decided to leave him, reaching for a pistol she had moved beforehand.

“When Ken was drunk and angry, he was dangerous...” Andrea Fortuin read from her statement in court. “The only thing the community saw was the model of a man who was so wronged because his wife left him. The events of Feb. 5 and 6 were inevitable. He didn’t do this because I left. I left because I knew this or something like this was going to happen...Ken held us all financially and emotionally hostage. And I take no pleasure in seeing him self-destruct. I have forgiven and must move on...”

Border-crossing tornado

The rusty bunk feeder used as to hold hay for Steve Guernsey’s cattle on Bozenkill Road was thrown into an adjacent field as he took cover in the second story of his barn on May 22.

A “rain-wrapped” tornado came through the northwestern tip of Albany County from Delanson, where it had caused the most damage. It showered hail and amounts of rain so large that the twister couldn’t be seen, though one citizen-submitted photo appeared to show two vortices, said Stephen DiRienzo, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Albany.

On the Enhanced Fujita (or EF) Scale rating the strength of tornadoes, the one May was an EF3 at its height, DiRienzo said, though for most of its path it was EF0 or EF1.

“It’s an inexact science,” said DiRienzo. “But, generally, to get trees uprooted without snapping, it takes high-end EF0.”

In a 19-county forecast area, DiRienzo said, just three EF4 tornados have been recorded in the last 63 years, with the average number at two or three tornadoes per year.

The damage caused by the storm in May included a torn-open home on Route 20 in Delanson, a wall that was removed from the Duanesburg Ambulance headquarters, and the ripped roof of a motel. Guernsey’s neighbor on Bozenkill Road, Nicole Burian, had several windows in her large home broken through, its standing-seam terne roof peeled away, and a storage barn left as a pile of wood.

Dozens of yards away from the cows it served, Steve Guernsey’s heavy bunk feeder from the barnyard was launched into a field on May 22. The tornado took with it the pieces of wood, glass, and metal from the farmhouse and barns on either side of Bozenkill Road, leaving one crumpled scrap of metal on top of the feeder. Enterprise file photo — Marcello Iaia

 

Comprehensive planning, discreet zoning

More than a year ago, the first survey was available for residents state their views for a revised comprehensive plan, which guides zoning regulations, among other decisions by the town’s boards.

Additional surveys have followed, and several meetings were held this year to refine the feedback. The discussion and analysis will continue at a meeting in Town Hall at 7 p.m. on Jan. 5.

The current plan was adopted nearly 20 years ago, suggested for revision as the town council began discussing the process of extracting natural gas from underground deposits, known as high-volume hydraulic fracturing. Since then, the town’s conservation advisory council has Knox prohibit the process, citing risks to health and resources. The state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, announced last month, after a protracted review, that his administration would ban the process across New York.

Putting heads together: Councilwoman Amy Pokorny, center, checks on residents who came to a meeting for the Knox comprehensive plan on July 22. Seated from the left are Tax Collector Diane Champion, and two leaders of the Hilltown Seniors group, Charlotte Fuss and Linda Carman. Enterprise file photo — Marcello Iaia

 

Meanwhile, a towing business on Township Road was the center of a debate over zoning and business in the town that ultimately implicated the comprehensive plan. It, along with the town’s zoning law, includes provisions for business districts in the town, but none had been formally setup by the town board until this year.

Some residents who spoke at town board meetings argued that commercial zoning was long overdue and that Hitmans Towing was being unfairly pursued as a result.

One business district was ultimately passed in the hamlet — where two men are separately hoping to start gas stations and convenience stores — but a second district along Route 146 and encompassing Hitmans was put off until a comprehensive plan revision started this year is completed.

Citizens petitioned the town board to amend the zoning law and allow Hitmans Towing to operate legally.

Still, the jury trial on the zoning violation against Kristen Reynders, who owns the business and lives with her family on the same property, is scheduled for Jan. 26, according to John Dorfman, the town’s attorney. It was delayed because zoning administrator Robert Delaney, who may be called by the town to testify, was not available.

The town board voted to move forward with creating a second business district in the area of the towing business after the revision of the plan is complete. It unanimously created a business district for the hamlet on Route 157, where several businesses are vacant.

Resident Vasilios Lefkaditis, however, purchased a property on the corner of the state route and Knox Cave Road, where the Knox Country Store and a post office once were. Now, the store is closed and Lefkaditis wants to open a gas station. The United States Postal Service installed outdoor post office boxes at Town Hall in May after its long absence from the town.

Just a few houses down the road, a parcel that was once the town’s main gas station, was slated for Michael Morey to take over when the county legislature approved his bid in a foreclosure auction this summer. He said he wanted to create a gas station and convenience store, named “Knox Variety Store and Gas.”

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