Fire damages apartment on South Raccoon Road

Fire damages apartment on South Raccoon Road
AUSTINTOWN -- Fire caused about 10,000 damage to a South Raccoon Road apartment. The flames broke out about 7:20 a.m. Thursday in an apartment at 2520 S. Raccoon, the fire department said. A boiler furnace that overheated is thought to be the cause. No one was injured.
Church officials: Moneywas stolen from safe
GIRARD -- Officials at First United Methodist Church on North State Street told police someone stole 52.50 in Sunday school offering money from an unlocked safe on the church's second floor.
Church officials think the theft took place Sunday, but was noticed Tuesday. The money was placed in the safe Sunday, but the safe was not locked until later that day when other offering money was placed in the safe.
Police were told a neatly dressed woman came to the church Sunday and asked for coats and gloves between the time of the money being put in the safe and the safe being locked. She was told to come back for the items but never did so. Reports say she was in the area of the unlocked safe.
Report: Man facescharges after threat
LIBERTY -- A Girard man is charged with misdemeanor aggravated menacing and criminal trespassing after police said he threatened a township man Tuesday.
Police officers were advising a 42-year-old Logan Arms man who had complained to police about threats from Donald Zuppo, 38, of Kline Street, Girard, when Zuppo came into the Logan Arms home uninvited and went after the complaining man. Officers ordered Zuppo to the ground at gunpoint and took him into custody, a police report says.
Zuppo later told police he was angry because he gave the man 26,000 to put into a bank account and the man claims he was never given any money, reports say.
Lake Milton resident pleads guilty in court
LISBON -- Robert J. Smith, 45, of Lake Milton, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Columbiana County Common Pleas Court to a charge of robbery and failure to comply with a police order.
Smith pretended to have a gun when he demanded money from a teller at the Tri-State Credit Union in East Liverpool on Nov. 18, 2005.
Police were alerted and chased Smith north on state Route 11. Smith threw items and money out of his car and tried to ram cruisers. Police finally used a device to flatten the car's wheels near Leetonia. He took less than 10,000 but authorities didn't know how much money was recovered. Smith faces a maximum of 13 years in prison.
Man indicted againon a robbery charge
WARREN -- A man indicted on aggravated robbery and robbery charges in purse snatchings at Forum Health Northside Medical Center in March was indicted on another robbery charge. Mahoning County officials determined that they had incorrectly located one of his crimes in Mahoning County.
Vernon L. Reed, 34, with addresses on Ivanhoe Avenue in Warren and Gypsy Lane in Youngstown, is now indicted on three robbery charges in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court. The added charge stems from a report that Reed took a 65-year-old Canfield woman's purse and was apprehended a short time later by hospital police with the woman's purse still on him.
Commissioners seeking grant funds from ODNR
LISBON -- Columbiana County commissioners will seek 6,197 in grant funds from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to improve recycling at the county fair. The money would be used to buy 50 large containers shaped like plastic bottles that would be used to collect empty plastic pop and water bottles.
The grant would also be used to buy 50 containers on wheels to be placed at vendor stalls to collect cardboard. Barb Walton, an administrative assistant at the Carroll-Columbiana-Harrison Solid Waste District, said the weeklong fair generates eight tons of waste. The proposed containers could help recycle 25 percent of that amount.