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Man convicted of Youngstown military statue incident back in trouble three weeks after leaving prison
By Ed Runyan
brookfield
Richard Couturiaux of Brookfield served his entire 26-month prison term for vandalizing a $36,000 military statue from a Youngstown cemetery in March 2013, chopping it up and selling parts of it to a Girard scrapyard, but he was charged with committing new offenses three weeks after being released.
Couturiaux, 33, of South Park Drive, who has been booked into the Trumbull County Jail 17 times since 2000, was arrested Friday on a number of outstanding warrants and a domestic-violence charge from Friday in Brookfield. He will be in Eastern District Court here on many of them today.
On Jan. 23, 2015, Couturiaux was driving through North Jackson at 75 miles per hour in a 55-mph zone when he was stopped by a North Jackson officer, who wrote him a citation, police said.
But Couturiaux didn’t have a driver’s license with him and identified himself as his brother and gave his brother’s birth date, police said.
His brother reported the matter to police in July, after his car insurance went up because of the speeding ticket.
It became clear then that the man driving in January was Richard Couturiaux because the officer who wrote the citation looked at a photograph of Richard Couturiaux and identified him, police said.
Couturiaux was released from prison Jan. 2, 2015, after serving his entire 26-month prison term on the statue theft and a separate 2012 Hubbard Township burglary.
His time in prison was 17 months, but he got credit for 256 days he served in the county jail, said JoEllen Smith, a spokeswoman for the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Brookfield police arrested Couturiaux on July 29, 2015, and took him to the Mahoning County jail, where he was held in the North Jackson incident, which resulted in felony charges of identity fraud and forgery.
A bench warrant was issued in September when he failed to appear for his next hearing, according to court records.
In addition to domestic violence, Couturiaux also has four other cases pending in Eastern District Court in Brookfield for charges filed throughout 2015 by Brookfield police, including three counts of possessing drug-abuse instruments and one of heroin possession.
He also was named in Brookfield police reports as a suspect in three theft offenses in July on South Park Drive, but he has not been charged, Brookfield Police Chief Dan Faustino said.
Also named as a suspect in some of the break-ins was Dakota R. Garvey, 19, also of South Park Drive, who was indicted in May in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court on two counts of breaking and entering and two counts of petty theft, according to Eastern District court records.
Couturiaux and Garvey are known to associate, according to Brookfield police, who say Couturiaux has been arrested by their department at least 12 times since he turned 18.
Couturiaux also served a 12-month prison term for drug possession out of Mahoning County starting in April 2010 and ending in 2011.