Michael Kenneth Collins, 40, male, White, was at home in Dowagiac, Michigan when violence came through his front door in the dark hours of Monday, January 27, 2020. Investigators said two men forced their way into the residence on Louise Avenue near Pine Lake, and what began as a home invasion turned into a killing. Collins was shot inside the house as the intruders controlled the scene long enough to search for things to take, leaving the people trapped inside to endure the terror of being
overpowered in a place that should have been safe.
Police said the attack was not random. They quickly focused on Jay Vincent Penar and Justin Robert-Gabriel Carlton as suspects, with investigators noting that Penar had previously lived at the home and describing the incident as targeted. Reports said other people inside the house were tied up while the suspects looked for property to steal, and both men were taken into custody soon after—Penar arrested north of Three Rivers and Carlton arrested at a home in Kalamazoo Township. Prosecutors initially filed a heavy stack of charges, including open murder, conspiracy to commit armed robbery, multiple counts of armed robbery, and felony-firearm counts, as the case moved into the Cass County court system.
As the story unfolded in court, Carlton admitted the core of what happened that night. According to accounts citing the prosecutor’s office, he and Penar went to the Louise Avenue home armed and masked, entered together, and when Collins resisted, Carlton shot him. After the shooting, investigators said the pair carried stolen items out and later dropped them at what was described as a “drug house” in Kalamazoo, tying the robbery to a wider drug-linked backdrop noted in early reporting. Carlton ultimately pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, and in December 2020 he was sentenced to a term of 43 to 70 years in prison, a punishment that state corrections records reflect as leaving him with no earliest release date until 2063.
Penar’s case followed its own grim track to conviction. Prosecutors described him as Carlton’s co-defendant in the confrontation inside the Louise Street/Louise Avenue home, and he later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder as well. In June 2021, he was sentenced to 26 to 50 years in prison, with Michigan Department of Corrections records listing an earliest release date in 2046.
