43
Two arraigned for separate thefts
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Two men arraigned for separate cases in which they are accused of stealing are sort of like a novice and the old hand.
Dustin Beach, 29, of Hitchcock Road, in Boardman is in the Mahoning County jail on $20,000 bond after he was arraigned before Judge Elizabeth Kobly on two counts of theft.
Beach faces four other counts of theft in county area court in Boardman after being accused of stealing purses from elderly women at Giant Eagle and Walmart in Boardman. He has a 2014 endangering children charge, which he pleaded guilty to in March. The theft charges in Boardman were filed against him Tuesday.
Beach also is suspected of taking a purse recently at the Walmart in Liberty, police said.
John Blazo, 53, of New Road in Austintown, also was arraigned before Judge Kobly on two counts of theft on charges of taking a truck-load of peat moss from Calvary Cemetery on May 26. He was arrested on a warrant Thursday. Judge Kobly set his bond at $10,000.
Blazo has a record stretching back at least to 1980 when he was 18, in which Vindicator files show he was arrested in the robbery of a Red Barn restaurant on Belmont Avenue in Liberty. Court records also show he was sentenced to five to 25 years in prison in 1994 in common pleas court for an aggravated robbery conviction, but no details of that case could be found.
Beach is accused of taking a backpack from a woman who was working at the Youngstown State University Summer Festival of the Arts last Saturday and trying to use the credit cards. Reports said within minutes of the backpack being taken, someone tried to use it three times at an ATM on campus but could not without having the proper PIN.
Detectives with the university police department viewed video footage from the ATM on Sunday and were able to identify him through that, reports said. An employee of the campus library found the woman’s backpack Tuesday outside the library.
Blazo also has an arrest warrant from Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, where he failed to show up in April for sentencing on theft charges there. He had pleaded guilty to the charges in February stemming from separate cases in Boardman and Austintown.