APRIL

APRIL
1. With costs rising and sales tax and other income stagnant, 33 Mahoning County employees are receiving layoff notices this week, 20 of them in the Mahoning County Child Support Enforcement Agency, to save the county about $500,000 a year. This is in addition to 54 sheriff's department employees laid off in early March.
* As Marc's opens its nonunion Austintown store today, Local 880 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union sets up an informational picket line urging people to support union stores.
* Dante Massacci Sr., and his son, Dante Massacci Jr., are sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison after pleading guilty to violating the Hobbs Act by paying off a Warren city official to get a half-dozen city construction contracts over three years.
2. Sharon Custom Metal Forming Inc. of Hermitage has purchased the assets of Wheatland Tube's Roll Forming Division in Warren and will move the equipment and its own Hermitage operation to a new building in Farrell.
3. A three-member YSU investigative panel finds John Habat, vice president for administration, did not violate university policy. Habat had been accused of accessing pornography from his university-owned laptop computer. A family member confirms the nonuniversity use was by a minor child in the Habat household, the panel's report says.
* The Oxford Automotive stamping plant in Masury will close by the end of October, eliminating 130 jobs.
4. Kyrsten Studer, 14, of Grandview Avenue, Hubbard, is killed and five other girls are injured in a hit-and-run accident along state Route 304 in Hubbard Township.
7. Retired Judge Joseph E. O'Neill, 77, of the 7th District Court of Appeals, also a former Youngstown City Council president, dies at St. Elizabeth Health Center.
9. Sandra N. Clark, 46, and her husband, Michael T. Carney, 59, of Southington, president and vice president, respectively, of Autumn Industries Inc., a Warren trucking firm, are charged in federal court with conspiracy and 43 counts of bank fraud in a $1.2 million check-kiting scheme at the firm. Tami J. Steele, 38, of Warren, a CPA who served as the firm's controller, is charged with aiding and abetting bank fraud. The couple used an inflated bank balance to pay the firm's creditors, authorities say.
11. A jury finds Newton Falls Police Sgt. James Zimomra innocent of felonious assault, but guilty of misdemeanor assault for pushing a woman to the ground during a videotaped arrest last year. He was sentenced to a 30-day suspended jail term, two years' probation and 40 hours of community service.
14. J. Walter Dragelevich of Liberty, former Trumbull County prosecutor, faces up to three years in prison after pleading guilty to a federal charge of odometer tampering.
15. David C. Garvey, 22, formerly of Struthers, is sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty in the Oct. 8, 2000, murder of 12-year-old Shannon Kos, whose body was found in a culvert off East River Road in Lawrence County. Two other former Struthers men are serving life sentences for the crime.
16. Exterra Credit Recovery in downtown Youngstown lays off about 50 employees because of what the company said was a computer glitch that caused an unexpected $200,000 drop in earnings.
17. The Mahoning County Mental Health Board receives a $150,000 federal grant over two years to establish an adult mental health court in Youngstown Municipal Court.
* Two girls, Shannon Miller, 16, of Leetonia, a driver, and her passenger, Brenna Powell, 15, hometown unknown, are killed when the car they occupy hits a tree on Grafton Road near Miller Road in Salem Township.
21. Three Youngstown area Vietnam veterans who died during the 1980s of cancer caused by exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange are honored at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. They are Jerry J. Vennette, James R. Hein and Atty. Dean K. Phillips, who died when they were 39, 41, and 42, respectively.
* Kateo Patterson, 21, of Arch Street, Youngstown, is sentenced to 66 years to life in prison for helping to rob, kidnap, kill and burn Steven Skinner Jr., 24, of Warren, whose body was found in a burned car on Youngstown's East Side in May 2000.
22. Gloria Greenfield of Niles is sentenced to one to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of manslaughter in the deaths of her infant son, Theodore, in 1970, and infant daughter, Regina, in 1971.
23. Austintown Board of Education lays off eight first-year teachers as part of a money-saving effort.
26. A falling beam crushed a pedestrian as he watched the demolition of a parking garage in downtown Youngstown. Charles Thomas, 55, and another man who had been talking on the sidewalk near the demolition site tried to avoid the falling beam, but Thomas ran into its path, police said.
28. Some 470 workers belonging to United Steelworkers of America Local 1660 go on strike against Wheatland Tube Co. in a dispute over health care and retirement benefits.
29. Youngstown Patrolman Michael Hartzell, 26, is shot and killed. Hartzell was shot as he sat in his cruiser on Federal Plaza West near Home Savings and Loan and Edward W. Powers Auditorium. Police name Martin L. Koliser Jr., 31, of Boardman as the prime suspect.