Second man sentenced in military-statue theft

Staff report

WARREN

Michael A. Crytser, 27, of Masury, was sentenced to nine months in prison in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court for his role in the theft and desecration of a $36,000 brass military statue and gravestone marker from Mahoning Valley Memorial Park in Youngstown.

Crytser pleaded guilty Monday before Judge Peter Kontos to felony receiving stolen property and misdemeanor desecration.

Brookfield police recovered the grave marker from the garage of Crytser’s home in the 8000 block of West Ohio Street last year. At the time, Crytser said he didn’t know where it came from.

Richard Couturiaux, 31, of Main Street in Hubbard, received a 26-month prison term after being convicted of scrapping parts of the statue at scrap yards in Girard and Pennsylvania and a separate 2012 home burglary in Hubbard Township.

Chuck Morrow, an assistant county prosecutor, said Crytser received a lesser prison sentence than Couturiaux because his role was less than Couturiaux’s role in the crimes, and Crytser had a lesser criminal record with only one previous misdemeanor conviction.

Couturiaux was videotaped selling parts of the statue at a Girard scrap yard.

Cemetery officials believe they have recovered all but one piece of the statue, and it will be restored and remounted at a cost of about $5,000, Morrow said.

Judge Kontos also sentenced David A. Jorden, 49, of Scott Street Northeast to 18 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to gross sexual imposition and abduction.

Jorden groped a 9-year-old boy in the bathroom of the Trumbull Community Action Program on Palmyra Road Southwest in August 2013, prosecutors said. The boy was at the facility for tutoring, and Jorden was there to apply for heating assistance and wasn’t supposed to be in the area of the building where the offense occurred.

Jorden has worked as a local referee for basketball and possibly other sports, prosecutors said.