Parole hearing tabled

Parole hearing tabled
POLAND -- A hearing on the parole of Poland native Robert Girts, who was convicted in the 1992 murder of his wife, has been postponed. Girts, 52, has served two-thirds of his 20-years-to-life sentence for the murder of Diane Jones Girts, his third wife, who was poisoned. An institutional hearing was to be conducted Friday at the Oakwood Correctional Facility in Lima, where he is incarcerated, but Bettianne Jones, whose late husband was Diane Girts' brother, said the date has been changed to Aug. 14. Jones and Tom Morris, the brother of Girts' first wife, who also died young, are fighting Girts' parole. Girts was never charged in his first wife's death and the cause wasn't determined to be poisoning, but family members suspect he played a role.
GOP dinner speaker
BOARDMAN -- Sara Taylor, deputy assistant to President Bush and his director of political affairs, will be the keynote speaker at the Mahoning County Republican Party's Reagan Day dinner Wednesday at The Georgetown on South Avenue. Tickets for the event, which starts at 6:30 p.m., are $35. Tickets for a private reception with Taylor, which begins at 5:30 p.m., are $75 each, and include the cost of the dinner. Call party headquarters at (330) 629-7006.
Drug trafficking charge
CANFIELD -- Barbie L. Treharn of Geneva was in Mahoning County Jail on Friday in lieu of $8,500 bond after being arraigned on charges of trafficking in a school zone and falsification. City police arrested her after a traffic stop Thursday on North Broad Street near Canfield Middle School. She admitted having cocaine that she planned to sell, police said. At first she gave them a false name and birth date. The driver of the van in which she was a passenger was not charged.
District in 'fiscal watch'
COLUMBUS -- State Auditor Betty Montgomery said she placed the Youngstown School District in "fiscal watch" Friday because it failed to submit an acceptable plan to deal with pending budget deficits. The Ohio Department of Education had put Youngstown in "fiscal caution" in March and asked the auditor's office earlier this month to downgrade that rating to fiscal watch. Youngstown has 60 days to again try to come up with an acceptable plan dealing with a $4 million deficit this year and an $11.9 million deficit expected next year. Fiscal watch is one step above "fiscal emergency," in which the state appoints a committee to run the schools and devise a recovery plan.
Rape, kidnapping case
NILES -- A 23-year-old Niles man has been bound over to a Trumbull County grand jury on charges of rape and kidnapping. The action was taken Friday in the case of Richard S. Pietrouski after a hearing before municipal Judge Thomas W. Townley. Pietrouski is free after posting a $50,000 bond. Capt. Chuck Wilson said the 22-year-old victim went to Pietrouski's Hunter Street home June 9 to get money she claimed he owed her. Authorities said he became irate and attacked her. Afterward, Wilson said, Pietrouski would not let her go free. Instead, he forced her to drive him to his parents' Weathersfield Township home, throwing her cell phone out the window on the way. Police said Pietrouski threatened to hurt the victim if she reported the attack to police.
Drug, weapon charges
LIBERTY -- A 49-year-old Pennsylvania man has been charged with multiple felonies after a traffic stop Friday morning. According to police reports, officers stopped Oscar Lee Walter, of New Castle, just before 4:30 a.m. on Belmont Avenue for failing to use a turn signal. Reports say officers found a loaded handgun in the car and small bags of suspected crack and powder cocaine in Walter's socks. He has been charged with carrying a concealed weapon, illegally carrying a firearm, possession of crack and possession of cocaine.
City donates land
WARREN -- The city will donate the land Turner Middle School currently resides on to Packard Park, according to Christopher Stephenson, manager of Packard Music Hall and park. Turner will be torn down and pupils will be moved to a new school as part of a Warren city schools construction project. The project calls for the demolition of all school buildings, and construction of a new high school and four new kindergarten-through-eighth-grade buildings. Stephenson said Mayor Michael J. O'Brien announced the gift during the Packard Park Board of Trustees meeting Friday.