While she and her husband did not sustain serious injuries from thwarting off the man who broke into their home business, Dowagiac’s Leslie Malin described to Judge Michael Dodge’s courtroom Friday morning the struggles her family has had returning to a sense of normalcy, six months after the fact.

According to Malin, the couple’s 9-year-old son no longer feels safe to visit the family office, especially after dark. Their 16-year-old son will no longer stay home alone. Their 19-year-old daughter, who witnessed the attempted robbery from her window, was so shaken up by the experience she enrolled in a self-defense course, Malin said.

Even Leslie and her husband, Michael, no longer feel safe visiting their office, located 30 yards away from their home — a place that Leslie described as the family’s “play land.”  They have both since  gotten concealed pistol licenses.

“This has harmed our family, and taught us all lessons about innocence and happiness that should not have been learned at the hands of this man,” she said. “Home is supposed to be our safe space.”

While the judge admitted he couldn’t replace the Malins’ sense of security, he did grant them a measure of justice that morning by sending their intruder back to prison.

Dodge sentenced 39-year-old Terry Martin Podmajerski, of Decatur, to a minimum term of 40 months to a maximum term of 15 years in prison during his sentencing hearing Friday in Cass County court. Podmajerski was punished on charges of breaking and entering with intent, larceny in a building, bribing/intimidating witnesses and resisting/obstructing police, counts that he pleaded guilty to on April 8.

Podmajerski’s home invasion occurred Dec. 8 of last year, when the Decatur man broke into a pole barn located on the Malins’ property on Garrett Road, which was used as an office for the family’s landscaping business.

The intruder was in the process of piling up old computers and toolboxes by the front door to steal when Michael Malin, who had driven out to the office to investigate why the front door was left open, confronted the intruder. The two men briefly struggled with each other before Malin was able to subdue Podmajerski. He and his wife restrained the thief until police arrived.

“It was certainly a very brave thing to do,” Dodge said. “As was reported to me in the presentence report, you [Podmajerski] even threatened him with a gun, although you didn’t have one, but he didn’t know that.”

Podmajerski unsuccessfully attempted to escape from Dowagiac police officers after their arrival, leading to his resisting/obstructing police charge.

While in jail, the defendant asked his girlfriend to convince the Malins to drop the charges against him, and the woman actually showed up to the victims’ property to ask them to do so, Dodge said.

The judge pointed out that Podmajerski had committed the offense only six months removed from successfully completing parole for a pair of felonies, breaking and entering and assault with intent to do great bodily harm, which he had been released from prison for in 2013.

According to Podmajerski’s attorney, James Miller, the Decatur man was dealing with problems stemming from alcohol and drug abuse at the time of the incident, and was driven to steal from the Malins out of desperation to sustain his lifestyle, Miller said.

“That’s not an excuse,” he said. “That doesn’t even rise to the level of what the court consider as mitigation. But it certainly does explain what happened with Mr. Podmajerski that day.”

The defendant apologized to the court for the crime, telling his victims that in spite of the trauma his actions caused them, the man they encountered that night isn’t type of person he truly is, Podmajerski said.

“I’m at a loss for words as to why I thought this was a good idea at all,” he said. “I’m very ashamed of my behavior.”

Podmajerski was given credit for 172 days already served behind bars.