Sentencing set in vehicular homicide

Sentencing set in vehicular homicide

WARREN

Russell Lauer III, 44, of Cortland will be sentenced at 8:30 a.m. Aug. 28 for hitting and killing a young jogger along Ridge Road on Feb. 27, 2016.

Lauer pleaded guilty June 26 before Judge Peter Kontos of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court to aggravated vehicular homicide, failure to stop after an accident, operating a motor vehicle impaired and failing to drive in the marked lanes.

His plea agreement calls for him to get eight years in prison.

Lauer killed Brittany Szwedko, 28, of Cortland as she walked or jogged along Ridge Road in Fowler Township.

Szwedko was preparing to run a half-marathon.

Court documents say Lauer’s vehicle left the roadway and struck Szwedko. He tested just under the legal limit for alcohol but also had an illegal amount of the painkiller OxyContin in his system.

Choice for seniors

YOUNGSTOWN

Qualifying Youngstown City School seniors may remain at the high school they previously attended.

The plan announced earlier this year established nine preschool-to-eighth-grade schools and two high schools. The primary schools feed into either East or Chaney high school.

Seniors must have a 95 percent attendance rate and minimum 2.0 grade-point average during the last school year. They also must find their own transportation.

Letters are being sent to those students’ homes to determine their preferences. This opportunity will not be available to future students.

Not-guilty plea

WARREN

Katie M. Hays, 31, of Palmyra Road Southwest pleaded not guilty Monday in Warren Municipal Court on three counts of child endangering after police said they revived her from an apparent heroin overdose while she was in charge of her three children.

A judge ordered her to have no contact with her children. She remains in the Trumbull County jail because of a warrant on a 2015 drug conviction.

Police were called to her Palmyra address at 6:03 p.m. Friday. She was on her back near a bathroom unresponsive. An officer administered the opiate-reversal drug naloxone, and she became conscious.

At home with her were her children – 10 months, 5 and 8. A friend called 911 when he found Hays, he said.

Water alert lifted

YOUNGSTOWN

A boil-water alert for the city’s West Side and the eastern part of Austintown, called Friday because of low pressure caused by a power outage, has been lifted. Water samples were tested and found not to be contaminated Monday, according to the city water department.

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