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Cortland man charged with impersonating police officer
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
A Cortland man who claims he’s in training to be a private investigator has been charged twice with misdemeanor offenses this month after walking into Trumbull County businesses wearing a gun belt holding a handgun.
He told employees he’s looking for a dangerous criminal.
Jeremiah J. Lilly, 27, of Market Street, was booked into the Trumbull County Jail on Tuesday night on a warrant charging him with misdemeanor making false alarms in Kinsman. He was released about 90 minutes later, after posting $1,000 bond.
It is the seventh time Lilly has been booked into the jail since 2006.
The Kinsman incident involved the Dollar General store on Main Street and the Kinsman Gulf gas station on state Route 7, both Oct. 8.
A Kinsman Police report said Dollar General employees reported that Lilly walked in to the store wearing a gun belt and handgun and asked employees if they had seen a male whose photo he showed them on his cellphone. He said the male was “armed and dangerous.”
He told the workers the suspect had stabbed a Cortland police officer with a heroin needle and got away.
However, the Kinsman officer checked with the county 911, and nothing like that had been reported. But a man wearing a gun belt and gun also had asked similar questions that day of employees at the Kinsman Gulf station.
The Kinsman officer spoke with the Kinsman Gulf employees, who said Lilly told them the man he was looking for had assaulted a Kinsman police officer and got away.
Kinsman police filed a misdemeanor making-false-alarms charge against Lilly on Tuesday in Eastern District Court in Brookfield. No hearing date has been set.
On Oct. 19, Lilly walked into Wayside Restaurant on State Road in Champion and showed two employees a photo on his cellphone of a man, 25, from Cortland who had multiple warrants out for his arrest.
The employees said they had not seen the suspect, so Lilly told them to “call us right away” if they see him. Lilly was wearing a gun belt with a badge attached to it and handgun. He was wearing a bulletproof vest with police written on it in yellow. He also had a radio and flashlight.
When the women asked Lilly what department to call, Lilly said to just call 911 because the suspect is “armed and dangerous.”
The employees were suspicious of Lilly and called police because Lilly had tattoos on his arms and neck, including one of a naked woman.
A Champion police officer also was looking for the suspect on Lilly’s phone and later went to a house on Esther Drive looking for him, but didn’t find him. Lilly pulled up nearby the Esther residence, and officers approached him to talk to him.
Lilly was wearing the vest and gun belt, but his handgun, which he showed the officer, was in the trunk. The Champion officer wrote Lilly a summons for misdemeanor impersonating an officer and released him.
A man identifying himself as Lilly called The Vindicator shortly after the Champion incident, saying he’s in training to be a private investigator.
Lilly has been charged 19 times through Central District Court in Cortland on a variety of matters.