Woman sentenced for smuggling drug

By Ed Runyan | May 25, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

WARREN

Brandy M. Shifkoski, 28, of Hiram and Middleburg Heights, will spend the next two years in prison for giving a Trumbull County Jail inmate Oxycodone.

The felony offense, which occurred April 30, 2010, at the Trumbull County Dog Kennel on Anderson Avenue in Howland, also resulted in charges against the inmate, who got a two-year prison sentence last year for his role in the crime.

At Shifkoski’s sentencing Tuesday, Chris Becker, an assistant Trumbull County prosecutor, told Judge Andrew Logan he felt Shifkoski’s actions were idiotic and harmful.

“I think she should get the maximum and send the message that no one should be allowed to bring drugs into the jail, let alone on the streets,” Becker said, adding that the jail is “one place where there should be no drugs.”

Shifkoski, who could have gotten up to five years in prison or probation, has been to prison two previous times, one of them for burglary. She cried after learning her sentence.

Becker said the inmate, Greg A. Barnhart, 24, of state Route 534, West Farmington, gave the drugs to other inmates at the jail, who also used them.

James Keating, Trumbull County’s human-resources director, who has supervisory responsibilities at the dog kennel, said Barnhart was a nonviolent offender who was deemed trustworthy enough to spend the day at the kennel to clean cages, feed and water the dogs and do other jobs.

Dog-kennel employees were the only personnel on hand to monitor Barnhart’s actions, and the kennel’s procedures for monitoring such inmates were not sufficient at the time, Keating said.

The program discontinued for several months until those procedures could be tightened up, Keating said.

Barnhart was in the jail on a misdemeanor charge of receiving stolen property at the time of the offense, but the drug incident resulted in two felony charges being added and his eventual two-year prison term last November.