FEBRUARY

FEBRUARY
1. Trumbull County Jail Corrections Officers Michael Battee and Charles Parks are placed on paid administrative leave amid allegations of sexual misconduct by female former jail inmates. This follows the resignation of Officer John Clutter in January following similar allegations.
4. Maverick Tube Co. of St. Louis, new owner of the former LTV Poland Avenue pipe mill, announces it will close the mill sometime between April and June, eliminating 57 jobs.
* With more than 40 inches of snow having fallen to date this season, local governments in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys have found removing it to be inconvenient and costly.
* In a special election, voters in the Boardman, Poland and Jackson-Milton school districts pass tax levies that failed in November, and voters in the Joseph Badger School District pass a bond issue. The districts had been preparing to make large budget cuts if the levies failed.
5. Goldstein's Furniture plans to build a new store employing about 30 people at Boardman-Poland Road and Tanglewood Drive in Boardman and open it this fall.
6. Niles Atty. J. Walter Dragelevich, 60, former Trumbull County prosecutor, faces a federal charge of odometer tampering.
7. Delphi Packard Electric Systems reports it added $2.7 billion in new wiring business last year.
10. Discouraged by the state's failure to solve the school funding crisis, Superintendent Richard Denamen announces he's resigning, effective Aug. 1, after 10 years as Austintown Schools superintendent.
* Michael Battee, 33, a Trumbull County jailer accused of having sexual contact with female inmates, resigns a day before he is scheduled to take a lie detector test.
* Forty members of the Marine Corps' Landing Support Equipment Company based at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station in Vienna will be activated Feb. 13 for at least a year in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. They will initially go to southern California and may be sent overseas at a later date.
11. Judge Maureen A. Cronin sentences William Vaughn, 22, of Berwick Avenue, and Freddie Lewis, 20, of Tacoma Avenue, each to 33 years to life in prison for the robbery and murder of YSU student Justin Treasic, 21, who was shot in the head during a drug deal on Youngstown's North Side in February 2002.
* Ray Getz, 56, announces his retirement, effective Dec. 31, as superintendent of Lordstown Schools.
12. Because of a $150,000 campaign shortfall, the Youngstown-Mahoning Valley United Way will have to reduce allocations to its agencies. The campaign raised $3,150,000 of its $3.3 million goal.
13. The impending threat of war with Iraq leads area residents to stock up on emergency supplies, such as duct tape, plastic sheeting, flashlights, batteries, bottled water and canned goods.
15. About 300 people gather in cold weather outside the Thomas Lambros Federal Courthouse in downtown Youngstown for a protest rally against the impending war with Iraq.
17. The Mahoning and Shenango valleys dig out and YSU is closed after the area receives 8 inches of snow from a storm that dumped 25 inches in the Washington, D.C., area.
* Following the recommendation of the jury that convicted Perry S. Ricciardi II, formerly of Struthers, Judge J. Craig Cox sentences him to life in prison in the Oct. 8, 2000, stabbing death of Shannon Leigh Kos, 12, of Youngstown. Ricciardi's trial lasted five weeks.
18. Nurses and physicians belonging to public health response teams from the Mahoning and Trumbull County health departments will begin receiving smallpox inoculations next week so they'll be prepared to handle a bioterrorist attack.
19. U.S. Reps. Tim Ryan and Ted Strickland begin forming a local committee to marshal public support for keeping open the Youngstown Air Reserve Station in Vienna.
* Steelworkers at International Steel Group, which operates former LTV facilities, including the Warren coke plant, ratify a six-year labor contract with hourly wages between $15 and $20.50.
20. Twenty members of the Services Squadron of the Air Force Reserve's 910th Airlift Wing based in Vienna are scheduled to be activated within a week in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
* Guitarist Ty Longley, a member of the band Great White who was born in Sharon and graduated from Brookfield High School in 1990, dies as The Station nightclub in West Warwick, R.I., erupts into flames during a pyrotechnics display at a rock concert, killing at least 97 people and injuring about 170 more as concertgoers frantically rush to escape.
* The Rev. Thomas Spisak, 60, is found dead with an apparent gunshot wound in his bed at the St. Mary's Church Rectory in Warren. Father Spisak made a public apology and pleaded guilty in 1999 to making a false police report about being attacked by black teens to cover up a suicide attempt.
25. The $8 million Flying J Travel Plaza opens in Hubbard, employing 125 workers.
26. Trumbull County commissioners vote unanimously to add a half-percent to the county sales tax for one year and let the voters decide in November whether to continue the tax indefinitely.
28. With more than 26 inches having fallen at Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport, this month has been the snowiest February on record in the Mahoning Valley.
* Some 243 members of the Vienna-based 910th Airlift Group -- the largest contingent of Air Force reservists from that unit to be activated since Desert Storm -- will leave for Germany next week for a one year tour of duty in support of peacekeeping operations in Bosnia.