Woman admits emailing threat

March 30, 2017 at 12:05a.m.

CLEVELAND

A former Canfield woman, who now lives in Mount Airy, Md., has pleaded guilty to making an interstate threat after she threatened to injure a former Mill Creek MetroParks executive director with a .38-caliber gun.

Amy Beitzel, 53, entered her plea to the felony charge Monday before U.S. District Court Judge Patricia A. Gaughan, who will sentence her at 11:30 a.m. June 26.

A Nov. 16, 2016, federal grand jury indictment said Beitzel emailed the threat to Dennis Miller from Rockville, Md., to Youngstown on July 12, 2014, through a Sunnyvale, Calif., server.

The email was motivated by the controversial June 26, 2014, roundup and euthanasia of 238 geese in Mill Creek Park, which Miller had approved as a goose population and nuisance-control measure without a park board resolution.

The euthanasia was authorized by an Ohio Department of Natural Resources permit.

Miller resigned from his $87,500-a-year job as park system director, effective at the end of 2014.

The FBI investigated the case, in which the threat was sent to Miller’s work email address.

The maximum sentence for the charge to which Beitzel pleaded guilty is five years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine.

Under federal sentencing guidelines, the fact that she threatened an official victim works against her, but her acceptance of responsibility for her actions works in her favor, according to the plea agreement.

Using her email address, Beitzel sent the threat from a computer terminal at the Montgomery County Public Library.

The email said: “I will wreak vengeance on you. Watch your back. The 238 will be remembered. You [expletive] bastard. A well-placed .38 will do it.”