Early-release hearing set for woman who stole from Niles

Staff report

WARREN

Heidi Powell, 34, of Niles, will appear in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court today for a hearing that will determine whether she gets early release from prison for stealing $731 from the city of Niles.

Powell’s attorney, Kara Stanford, filed a request for Powell’s early release in November, and Judge W. Wyatt McKay ordered Sheriff Thomas Altiere to have Powell returned to the county jail last month so she would be available for the hearing.

She was being held at the Northeast Reintegration Center in Cleveland, a minimum-security and medium-security facility.

Judge McKay sentenced Powell, of West Park Avenue, former income-tax investigator with Niles, to six months in prison July 23, saying the prison term was because she had also been convicted of stealing $1,307 from her job at the AT&T store on Elm Road in Bazetta in April 2014 and placed on probation by Judge Ronald Rice of common pleas court.

She went to work for Niles a short time later and was found to have accepted payments 11 times from city tax customers in which she issued a receipt but then deleted the payment from the computer database and kept the money.

She resigned from the job and wrote an apology to Niles Mayor Ralph Infante, thanking him for “giving me a second chance when no one else would have.”

She pleaded guilty to theft in office, a low-level felony punishable by up to 12 months in prison.

When Powell and her attorney asked Judge McKay for probation after her second theft offense, Judge McKay said if a person proves himself or herself untrustworthy the first time “shame on you.” But for the judge to grant her probation for a second theft would be “shame on me.”

Chris Becker, assistant county prosecutor, said his office opposes Powell’s early-release request. Prison records say her full prison term expires Jan. 18, 2016.