BCI investigates charity group involving 2 deputies

One of the two men has been lead investigator in a number of high-profile cases.

STAFF REPORT

WARREN — Two top employees in the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Department are being investigated by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation for the way they spent money they collected for a charitable organization.

The two men, Detective Sgt. Peter Pizzulo and Sgt. Tony Leshnack, took sick time starting Monday, said Ernie Cook, chief deputy sheriff.

Don Guarino, the department’s chief of operations, said Sheriff Thomas Altiere asked BCI to look into the organization, Ohio Narcotics Officer Association, after he received complaints about the group and the involvement of Pizzulo and Leshnack, who are president and vice president. He didn’t know which was which.

Guarino said the two men formed the organization in 2004 to solicit money for charitable organizations, especially those that educate the public and distribute information on the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse.

Their involvement in the organization had nothing to do with the sheriff’s department, Guarino said.

No charges have been filed against either man, Cook added.

Pizzulo, as a member of the Trumbull County Homicide Task Force, has been lead investigator for several high-profile criminal cases, including the investigation of Jermaine “Maniac” McKinney of Youngstown, convicted of killing Wanda Rollyson and her daughter, Rebecca Cliburn, in Rollyson’s Newton Township home in 2005.

Pizzulo also is the detective who investigated the shooting of former Newton Township police officer Tom Colosimo, whose story about being shot by an assailant while on duty on Miller Graber Road this year was questioned by the sheriff’s department.

Leshnack is chief of the sheriff’s civil division, which serves documents such as subpoenas and criminal paperwork.

Altiere wrote reprimands for Pizzulo and Leshnack in 2001 for their actions during a fight with three other men outside a Niles bar while Puzzulo and Leshnack were off duty.