Sentencing postponed for former pharmacist

Staff report

WARREN

Sentencing for Kenneth Overholt Jr., former owner of Overholt’s Champion Pharmacy, has been pushed back to Oct. 27 because of Overholt’s poor health.

Overholt, 56, of Pierce Road, Champion, a Champion Township trustee from 1982 to 1997, was convicted in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court of multiple counts of aggravated drug trafficking and agreed to an 18-month prison sentence.

Before sentencing Thursday, Overholt’s attorney, Dan Letson, and Mike Burnett, assistant Trumbull County prosecutor, discussed Overholt’s health with Judge John M. Stuard, and Judge Stuard declined to send Overholt to prison.

Judge Stuard said imposing prison now on Overholt “wouldn’t do justice to either side.”

Letson has said Overholt is extremely ill with a chronic lung condition.

Overholt walked out of the courthouse after the hearing, free on $50,000 bond.

Overholt and two pharmacists who worked for him were charged after investigators followed complaints regarding a pain management doctor in Middlefield and found that Overholt’s pharmacy had filled thousands of prescriptions written by the doctor.

The prescriptions said they could only be filled at Overholt’s and some were for dosages as high as 10 times the normal daily amount.

None of the three is allowed to practice pharmacy, and hearings will be held in August to determine whether they will ever be allowed to resume their pharmacy careers.