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Coast Guard attack suspect involved in convenience store crash

Posted at 1:07 PM, May 04, 2017
and last updated 2017-05-04 14:12:43-04

HART, Mich – The driver of a vehicle which crashed into a West Michigan convenience store on Wednesday is the same suspect tied to an attack on the U.S. Coast Guard station in Grand Haven a couple years ago, police sources say.

Wednesday’s crash happened around 3:00 p.m. at the ShopKo Hometown in Hart.

Witnesses tell FOX17 a pickup truck came crashing through the front entrance of the store located off Polk Road and North 72nd Avenue.  The same witnesses tell FOX17 no one was hurt in the crash.  The suspected driver involved was taken into custody by responding officers.

Matthew Krueger (Photo: Oceana Co. Sheriff’s Department)

Online arrest records indicate 35-year-old Matthew Krueger is being held in Oceana County on felony damage to property charges following Wednesday’s crash.

Krueger was arraigned this afternoon, charged with malicious destruction of a building, assault with a dangerous weapon and reckless driving.

Court documents obtained by FOX17 in 2015 show Krueger admitted to police he’d set a fire at a home in Oceana County that his family owned because he was contemplating suicide.  The home was filled with antiques, made to look like an old Texaco Gas Station, considered by many as a landmark in Golden Township.  He’d apparently started a fire by placing a t-shirt on a hot plate and turning it on.

Krueger also admitted to setting another shirt on fire in that incident, but said once he realized a dog was in the home and would be killed in the blaze he grabbed the dog and left the scene.  Krueger never reported the fire to 911.

A few hours after that 2015 fire in Oceana County, Krueger allegedly rammed his truck through the Coast Guard Station gate in Grand Haven.  That crashed followed a phoned in bomb threat to the Coast Guard Station.

This is a developing story.