Teacher pleads innocent

Leone is a former Mineral Ridge High head football coach.

STAFF REPORT

WARREN — A physical education teacher for the city school district has pleaded innocent to a felony charge of menacing after he was accused of improperly following an ex-girlfriend and her friends.

Dominic R. Leone, 39, of Meadowbrook Avenue Southeast, pleaded innocent to the charge Friday morning in Warren Municipal Court after Warren police arrested him Thursday morning outside the Warren Board of Education offices on Monroe Street.

Police said the former girlfriend, who teaches at another building in the school district, said Leone followed her and her friends and has been seen in her yard looking in her windows.

She said Leone also was at the school where she works looking inside her car, according to a Warren police report.

Leone teaches physical education at the Jefferson building on Fifth Street Southwest.

Judge Terry Ivanchak set Leone’s bond at $5,000 and ordered that he be kept on monitored house arrest with an ankle bracelet if he does make bond. Leone also was ordered to make no contact with the woman.

If convicted of the fourth-degree felony, Leone could get up to 18 months in prison.

Officials with the school system could not be reached to comment on Leone’s job status.

Leone was head coach of the Mineral Ridge High School football team during the 2006, 2007 and 2008 school years but resigned after last season.

Before his coaching stint at Mineral Ridge, he was an assistant coach at Warren G. Harding High from 2000 to 2004, Brookfield from 1996 to 1999, and at The Rayen School in Youngstown from 1994 to 1995.