Driving His Point Across Dad Says He’s Frustrated With Child-Support System

Mark Heitman pays nearly one out of every three dollars he takes home in child support. He worried he might have to pay more.

So after a court hearing in which a judge ordered a review of Heitman’s child-support payments, he feared the worst and went out of control.

Monday night, he smashed his half-ton pickup through the plate-glass office front of the state’s Office of Support Enforcement on West Boone, scattering papers, computers and office equipment in several offices.

Heitman is accused of then walking into the building with a hammer and bashing six computer terminals, a charge he doesn’t deny.

“I thought, ‘Hey, you want everything I got. I’ll drive it right through your front door,”’ he said Tuesday in an interview at the Spokane County Jail.

“… Sometimes a guy has to make a point.”

Heitman, 42, of 522 E. Providence, was booked into the jail on charges of first-degree malicious mischief and second-degree burglary. He was being held late Tuesday.

“I’m not a deadbeat dad,” said Heitman, who turned himself in.

Heitman said he pays child support for his 11-year-old twin daughters. He also pays support for a son, whose mother also lives in the state.

Efforts to reach the mothers of those three children were unsuccessful Tuesday.

Two empty beer cans were on the floor of the truck, and the cab smelled of beer. “I had a couple of beers,” he said. “I was primed up.”

Aaron Powell, regional administrator for the state’s Division of Child Support Enforcement, said he couldn’t confirm Heitman’s status with the agency because of confidentiality laws.

The Spokane office was open as usual Tuesday morning.

“We’ve had nothing like this before,” Powell said.

Heitman said he went to Grays Harbor County on Monday for a preliminary court hearing regarding modification of his child support to his daughters.

Heitman, who earns $7.50 an hour as an electronics assembly worker, later worried that he wouldn’t be able to support his wife and two young sons.

Already, Heitman said $138 is taken out of his paycheck every other week for child support.

“My ex-wife, she lives better than me and my wife do, and we both work,” he said.

“The state isn’t giving us any room to survive.”

Heitman’s wife, Connie, said she understands the frustration that sparked her husband’s action, but doesn’t condone it.

“It’s a mess,” she said of the child-support situation. “And it’s a bigger one now.”

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