Official suspended

Official suspended

sebring

The Sebring Board of Education voted to suspend Superintendent Christopher Lewis with pay at an emergency board meeting Monday.

Elementary Principal Toni Viscounte will be interim superintendent. The board refused to provide more information.

Facing drug charges

YOUNGSTOWN

Police found a bag of suspected heroin and a bag of crack cocaine while chasing a man on the North Side on Sunday evening.

Richard Sutton, 21, of Akron, was taken to Mahoning County jail for the charges of possession of drugs/heroin, possession of drugs/cocaine, obstructing official business and possession of drug paraphernalia after he was arrested in the 2400 block of Logan Avenue about 7:15 p.m.

Reports said officers had seen a car he was driving at several drug houses Sunday and spotted it in the drive of a home on Dennick Avenue, with Sutton in the driveway talking on his cellphone. A woman came out of the house and said she did not know Sutton, and he and a passenger ran away.

Officers ran after him and found the suspected drugs on the ground where he was running, reports said. The passenger got away, reports said.

Two hurt in car crash

goshen

Two Salem men were hurt, one critically, in a car accident on Garfield Road, the Ohio State Highway Patrol’s Canfield post reported.

The crash happened at 4:24 p.m. Monday between Seacrist Road and state Route 534.

Police said Jonathan Shellenberger, 24, was driving west when he went off the road and hit a telephone pole.

Shellenberger was taken to St. Elizabeth Health Center, where he was in stable condition.

His passenger, Anthony Michael Colon, 23, was trapped in the car. After he was freed he was taken to St. Elizabeth’s, where he was in critical condition.

Bridge work to begin

NEGLEY

Work is set to begin Monday to replace a bridge on state Route 154, west of state Route 170, at Negley in Columbiana County. Two-way traffic will be maintained in one 11-foot lane with temporary traffic signals.

ODOT’s contractor for the $1.3 million project is Marucci and Gaffney Excavating Co. of Youngstown, and completion is planned for November.

Hearing postponed

AUSTINTOWN

A sentencing hearing for the former owner of a shuttered dance club has been postponed until 6 p.m. next Monday in Mahoning County Area Court here.

Sebastian Rucci, who owned the Go Go Girls Cabaret near state Route 46 and Interstate 80, is charged with eight counts of providing alcohol without a valid liquor license.

The hearing was to have been at 6 p.m. Monday at the court but was rescheduled because Judge David A. D’Apolito was unable to attend, said Ken Cardinal, the assistant Mahoning County prosecutor assigned to the case.

In December 2011, the Ohio Department of Commerce Division of Liquor Control confiscated all alcohol from the cabaret, saying the establishment’s liquor license was defunct.

Later, the club adopted a policy allowing patrons to bring their own alcoholic beverages. Nevertheless, Rucci was charged with serving alcohol in violation of the injunction, prosecutors said.

Proposed income tax

BELOIT

West Branch School District will have a special meeting to provide information about the proposed school-district income tax that will be on the May 6 ballot. The public meeting will take place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the West Branch Community Auditorium at the high school. The event will follow the regular school board meeting.