Girard worker fired after theft

The former city employee wrote checks for items that had nothing to do with the baseball association.

By Ed Runyan

GIRARD — A city street-department worker, sentenced last week to 20 days in the Trumbull County jail for stealing from the Girard Baseball Association while he was its president, has been fired.

Randy J. O’Neill, 53, who worked for the city for about three years, appeared for a predisciplinary conference Monday morning with Jerry Lambert, Girard safety-service director, and learned later that he had been fired.

O’Neill, of Elruth Court, Girard, pleaded guilty to grand theft, a felony, in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court in April for taking money from the baseball organization while serving as president.

Judge John M. Stuard also sentenced him Thursday to three years’ probation, ordered him to pay back $18,150 to the baseball organization and perform 200 hours of community service. He is ordered to pay back the stolen money in monthly installments.

Judge Stuard allowed O’Neill to report to the Trumbull County jail at 9 a.m. Sept. 30.

O’Neill could have gotten as much as 18 months in jail on the fourth-degree felony conviction.

The Girard Police Department, when it became suspicious of O’Neill, called in the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, former Girard Police Chief Frank Bigowski had said.

Jim Standohar, a Girard Baseball Association president after O’Neill, said O’Neill wrote checks for services and purchases that had nothing to do with the baseball association.

A letter to O’Neill said the firing is the result of the theft conviction, which constitutes one count each of dishonesty, immoral conduct, malfeasance and failure of good behavior. His actions are “gross misconduct,” the letter says.

“I find your actions to be unacceptable and in direct conflict with the trust and obligation that every public employee has to the public at large,” Lambert said in the letter.

“The City of Girard takes this obligation to the public very seriously and holds its employees to a standard of conduct that is consistent with the level of trust and integrity that the public expects of its public servants,” he continued.

The firing was effective immediately.

runyan@vindy.com