Shooter in BB gun spree gets prison

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Dennis Ditterline of Porter Township in Valparaiso. | provided photo

Updated: March 16, 2012 8:13AM

VALPARAISO — After more than 200 days in Porter County Jail, the man who terrorized south and central Porter County by shooting a BB gun 96 times at vehicles and houses was sentenced Tuesday.

Dennis R. Ditterline Jr., 39, is sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison and another four years on probation that includes an ankle monitor to keep track of him.

He will also have to pay almost $19,821 in restitution when released.

Judge Mary Harper said at Tuesday’s sentencing that if Ditterline hadn’t had a criminal history or if there hadn’t been such “a huge number of victims,” she’d have considered home detention.

“The pattern of criminal activity caused great fear in the community,” Harper said during the almost two-hour sentencing.

“You didn’t get people just once,” Harper said, noting one man had his vehicle’s windows shot out 11 times. “How about what they feel?”

The shootings began around November or December 2010 and continued to about May 2011.

Ditterline shot vehicles both moving and parked, as well as some homes, by sticking a BB pistol out his window as he drove around south of U.S. 30, along Indiana 2 and County Road 500W going up to the Lake County border.

The Porter County Prosecutor’s Office charged him with six counts of Class D felony criminal recklessness, 12 counts of misdemeanor criminal mischief and misdemeanor resisting a law enforcement officer, plus a habitual offender enhancement.

He pleaded to two of the felonies and the enhancement on Dec. 20, the incidents being an April 25 shooting of a moving vehicle on Indiana 2 and a May 18 shooting of two vehicles on County Road 100S.

Attorney Walter Alvarez argued that Ditterline was on myriad pain killers and anti-depressants that two doctors prescribed, essentially overdosing him while he was on medical leave from his job.

His father, Dennis Ray Ditterline Sr., testified that his son went through five days of detox in jail and was hospitalized because he bit a quarter-sized chunk out of his arm.

Alvarez argued that his client should get home detention and an ankle bracelet, going to work to make the $20,000 restitution and providing for his family, instead of prison but being confined to home rather than just serving probation.

Three victims testified during the sentencing.

Thomas Frailey told how his two mobile homes being shot took $1,000 from his vacation fund and time traveling to a sales lot because he couldn’t trust selling a vehicle in front of his home.

A neighbor whose cars were shot six times was watching with a gun to shoot back, he said.

Janet Miller, whose vehicle he shot while she drove home from work, said she afterward kept looking at other vehicles rather than the road.

“I do feel safe now,” Miller said after the sentencing.

With good-time credit and the amount of time Ditterline has spent in Porter County Jail, he could serve about a year more behind bars.