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Girard man faces charges in demolition at Delphi
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Sergio DiPaolo of Girard, sued by the Ohio attorney general last year for failing to properly carry out demolitions in Boardman and Newton Falls, is now charged criminally in Trumbull County for his work on demolitions in Warren and Champion.
Charges were filed in Warren Municipal Court Friday against DiPaolo, 46, and three of his employees after Chris Taneyhill, Warren building official, caught the workers doing demolition work in a former Delphi Packard Electric building on Dana Street Northeast on Feb. 18.
DiPaolo bought three former Delphi buildings Jan. 26.
The workers and their vehicles were inside the former production facility on the south side of Dana Street. Taneyhill opened an unlocked door and observed the workers taking down copper wiring and the metal and wire power-supply systems overhead, Taneyhill said.
DiPaolo, who was not present when the workers were discovered, does not have permission to enter the building because of the stop-work order Taneyhill issued Jan. 26 for DiPaolo’s three former Delphi buildings.
The stop-work order was issued after Warren police discovered DiPaolo and some of his workers inside the buildings the day he bought them from Delphi Packard Electric for $80,000. Workers were removing salvageable items from the buildings that day also.
Delphi had not notified city officials of the sale.
The work was not allowed because DiPaolo had not applied for a demolition permit. Taneyhill said DiPaolo still hasn’t applied for the permit.
The criminal charges filed against DiPaolo on Friday were for failing to register with the city as a contractor, working on the building without applying for a demolition permit, and disobeying the stop-work order.
DiPaolo is due in Warren Municipal Court at 9 a.m. March 9 to answer the three charges, all misdemeanors. If convicted, DiPaolo faces fines of up to $1,000 on each offense and a jail term of up to six months on each offense.
Each of his workers — Richard L. Herman Jr. of Youngstown, John E. Serratta III of Niles and Kenneth P. Foltz of Youngstown — is charged with failing to comply with a stop-work order. They also will be arraigned March 9.
Meanwhile, DiPaolo is due in Warren Municipal Court at 10:15 a.m. Friday for a pretrial hearing on an open-dumping charge filed by Harold Firster, environmental officer with the Trumbull County sheriff’s office Dec. 11.
The charge, a felony, was filed against DiPaolo and accuses him of using a former brick-manufacturing facility in Champion called Diversified Resources as a “dump site,” Firster said.
DiPaolo is accused of dumping truckloads of concrete and mixed construction and demolition debris at the site, which is across the state Route 5 Bypass from the former Copperweld Steel mill.
The owner of the facility, Edgar C. Knieriem of Cockeysville, Md., was charged with 12 counts of open burning and dumping in late 2009 for purportedly stockpiling thousands of tons of a substance called steel swarf at the site and allowing the rain and snow to wash the substance into the groundwater.
Knieriem’s case is still pending in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court. DiPaolo has carried out demolition work at the plant, Firster said.