Former Cortland chief set to enter guilty plea Oct. 22

Staff report

CORTLAND

Gary Mink, former Cortland police chief, is scheduled to enter a guilty plea at a 9:45 a.m. Oct. 22 hearing in his failure-to-stop-after-an accident case.

Mink’s hearing will be before Visiting Judge David Fuhry in Central District Court.

Mink, 62, is charged with failure to control his Jeep on state Route 46 in Bazetta Township on June 24. He also was charged with leaving the scene of an accident.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol said Mink’s vehicle entered a ditch near the Tamer Win Golf Course and hit a culvert. Cortland police followed a mud trail to Mink’s house about two miles away. Mink didn’t answer the door when an investigator with the patrol went to his house later.

But the next day, Mink told an investigator he suffered no injuries and planned to notify law enforcement of the crash within 24 hours.

Meanwhile, Judge Thomas Campbell lowered bond from $100,000 top $75,000 for William J. Bowdish, 37, of North Park Avenue in Bristolville and ordered him to be on electronically monitored house arrest if he’s able to make bond on a rape charge.

If he makes bond, Bowdish will live with his parents on Gaither Avenue on Youngstown’s South Side, Judge Campbell said.

Bowdish waived his preliminary hearing Monday, and the case is bound over to a Trumbull County grand jury. He is accused of sexually assaulting a female years ago when she was a juvenile.

Daniel E. Dicks, 38, of Berkshire Drive Southeast in Warren, also waived a preliminary hearing Monday on his felonious assault charge, accused of stabbing a man, 58, in the parking lot of a South High Street plaza Sept. 16 in Cortland.

His case is also bound over to the grand jury.