Magistrate: No civil-protection order for man accused of stalking Niles employee

WARREN — A Trumbull County magistrate ruled today that the Facebook posts George Kuriatnyk Jr. has written about a Niles employee and the instances in which Kuriatynk photographed and videotaped the worker did not rise to the level necessary to approve a civil stalking protection order.

After a three-hour hearing, Magistrate Patrick McCarthy ruled from the bench that Niles Parks and Recreation worker Mark Holmes did not prove that Kuriatnyk had committed menacing by stalking.

He heard testimony from both men and two other witnesses and looked at copies of Facebook posts submitted as evidence before saying that Kuriatnyk’s unfounded allegations on Facebook about Holmes showed “incredibly bad judgment,” but didn’t meet the legal definition of menacing by stalking.

McCarthy took time at the end to tell Kuriatnyk he “has no qualms” about Kuriatnyk being a government “watchdog,” but advised him to avoid being among the multitudes that use social media “in an incredibly juvenile way.”