-THE PLAIN DEALER, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23, Families named in $3.5 million suit over fire at school PETE COPELAND Lone picket A fire in a steel drum keeps Richard Wolf warm as he pickets yesterday at the Greyhound Greyhound bus drivers have been on strike since March 2. Bus Station, Chester Ave. near E. 13th St. Island site may contain another Civil War cemetery 1 'I Burglary suspects accused of attacking officer Two Willoughby men were charged yesterday with aggravated burglary in connection with an attack on a police officer who stopped an Oct.
14 break-in at an Eastlake car dealership. Joseph J. Vitanza, 19, and Robert D. Heym, 19, both of Lost Nation pleaded not guilty at their arraignment in Painesville Municipal Court. Eastlake Police Sgt.
Thomas Doyle said the two men are accused of trying to break into Arko Auto Sales on Vine St. when Patrolman Keith Harvey tried to intercede. According to police, Vitanza and Heym ran from the dealership, and Harvey chased them. When the trio reached E. 362nd Harvey was struck on the head with either a tire iron or a rock, police said.
Doyle said Harvey suffered a skull fracture and a cut head. He was treated at LakeWest Hospital in Willoughby. He remains on medical leave. Both Vitanza and Heym are in Lake County Jail after failing to post $50,000 cash bonds. They face preliminary hearings at 10 a.m.
today. Man charged with assault in bar stabbing A Painesville man accused of stabbing a Painesville man during a bar fight Saturday has been charged with felonious assault. in Matthew B. Dinkins, 29, of N. State did not enter a plea when he appeared Painesville Municipal Court yesterday.
Bond was set at $20,000. The victim, Daniel Mitchell, 25, of Painesville, was stabbed in the chest. He was listed in satisfactory condition in MetroHealth Medical Center, Cleveland. Police were called to a fight at Sporty's Lounge on S. State St.
early Saturday and arrested Dinkins as he was running from the bar, a police spokesman said. The Lake Break-out attempt at new jail investigated County Sheriff's Department is investigating an attempted break-out at the new, $30-million Lake County Jail in Painesville after several inmates tried to saw through steel bars on a window. Chief Deputy Warren H. Goodwin said deputies discovered tools used to saw through the bars on a routine check of cells last week. Goodwin refused to say how many inmates were involved or what tools were confiscated.
Break determines the abatement amount, but county commissioners must give the final approval. These are the other companies that have received tax abatements: Machine a Euclidbased company that is moving to Fairport Harbor. It is receiving an real estate tax abatement over seven years. The move will bring 42. jobs.
Modern Pharmacy Consultants which is consolidating its Hud- JOHNSON'S ISLAND, O. (AP) histof rian said yesterday he might have found other cemetery containing the remains of Confederate prisoners near where a oper plans to build homes and a marina. But a federal official said the discovery would not be enough to stop a Cleveland developer from beginning the project, which is opposed by residents and historians. A cemetery under federal control contains the remains of 206 Confederate held prisoner on this Lake Erie Island during the Civil War. Local historian Roger Long said he recently uncovered evidence of another cemetery, this one containing the graves of 17 prisoners.
He said he found the evidence after five years of research. Activist carrying heavyweight materials like coal, slag and steel coils. Previously, the city charged an annual permit fee of $500 for each truck fleet, and truck drivers could generally set their own routes. The new annual fees range from $750 for a fleet of flatbed steelhauling trucks to $13,500 per fleet of trucks carrying bulk items such as salt and slag and heavy equipment. The city will determine the routes of oversize trucks and bulk.
carriers. Councilman Patrick J. O'Malley, D-16, who sponsored the measure, said it would limit the trucks from traveling in well-populated neighborhoods and causing noise and Long said the cemetery might lead historians to rethink how Southern prisoners were treated. "Northerners have always claimed that they treated the Southerners very well and that they gave them decent burials. But now we find that they had put them back there in these shallow graves when they died of diseases," said Long.
The evidence includes a transcript of a contract between the federal government and a Sandusky gravedigger on Oct. 18, 1866. The contract required the gravedigger to move bodies from a burial site near a socalled Pestilence House, where sick officers were lodged, to the main cemetery. Long also found a local newspaper story from June 16, 1910, reporting that four complete skeletons were unearthed during a construction project near the site of the Pestilence House. Long said this where Carl Zipfel, owner of JI Development plans to build his multimillion-dollar project.
A total of 245 prisoners died on the island; 206 were buried in the cemetery, and 22 were shipped elsewhere for burial, according to federal records. But no one knows what happened to the other 17. Using a list federal officials kept at the prison, Long said he could identify the remains if Zipfel would let him excavate. But he said Zipfel has refused to allow him on his property. The site is where Zipfel plans to build a road leading to the development.
Several telephone calls to Zipfel's office were not answered. CHAN Cheryl Lessin watches as the jury returns to court from a recess during her trial on a charge of inciting violence. Parents site of a shooting on the first day of school. East Tech also has reported to the school district's safety and security department two minor Geese of dead geese, but received no answer. "This has been an ongoing problem for two years," Fischer said.
Juan Sandusky, state game protector for Lake County, said Berick knew of the problem and said he By ULYSSES TORASSA STAFF WRITER An insurance company filed a $3.5 million suit yesterday against the families of two teens charged with setting a fire at North Olmsted High School and the alarm company that allegedly failed to respond to the fire alarm. Nationwide Mutual Fire Insurance Co. of Columbus sued to reN. Olmsted cover the money it schools expects to spend repairing the school and putting its 1,600 students in temporary quarters. Police said two teens, one a North Olmsted senior and the other a dropout from the school, broke into the school in the early hours of Sept.
16, vandalized some offices and then set the fire as an afterthought as they left. The fire forced officials to cancel school for two weeks and set up temporary classrooms in the International Exposition Center in Brook Park. Crews are repairing damage estimated at more than $2 million, and school officials have said they hope to move back into the school sometime next month. The North Olmsted Police and Fire departments said that because they were never notified by But Zipfel has said the project would not interfere with the 22 acres where the union prison once stood. Most of prison's buildings have long been removed or destroyed by fire.
Richard Boyd, director of the National Cemetery, a Veterans Administration division in Dayton that oversees the Johnson's Island cemetery, said his agency does not have the power to stop the project. "I think the historical documents support the fact that there was an area isolated where contagious prisoners were kept, and I also believe that there was another cemetery there. But from the VA's point of view, that is not our land and we really don't have any jurisdiction over what is found there," Boyd said. The Ottawa Regional Planning the school's alarm company of the break-in and fire, the blaze spread for at least two hours before firefighters arrived. U.S.
Protective Services, formerly Sonitrol Security Systems, is under contract to provide alarm services to the North Olmsted schools. Officials the company could not be reached for comment yesterday. In the suit, filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, Nationwide says U.S. Protective Services received an alarm signal at the high school, but failed to notify authorities. The fire was discovered after a police officer heard the alarm and searched a 4-square-mile area until he found the source, police said.
The suit seeks to recover damages from the two young men and their parents, but does not name them. Although one of the teens is now 18, police have not identified them and have charged them as juveniles because they were both 17 at the time of the fire. Lawyers for Nationwide could not be reached for comment on the suit. Meanwhile, an initial hearing to determine whether the two should be tried as juveniles or adults scheduled for Thursday in Juvenile Court. 01 Commission, which oversees development for Ottawa County, has approved JI Development's plans to build the first phase of the project.
That initial stage involves 84 single-family homes and dock space on the island's south end. The company's request to build a marina and sewer line is pending before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The prison opened in April 1862 and held up to 3,200 prisoners. When it closed in September 1865, it had housed about prisoners, including 27 Confederate generals.
The prison had 13 buildings. The last building burned down in the 1940s. Flag-burner's lawyers: say trial is an attack on freedom of speech By KAREN FARKAS STAFF WRITER According to her lawyers, Cheryl Lessin, who burned a flag on Public Square in August, is facing a dangerous attack on her right of free speech. But according to assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutors, the right Cuyahoga to and burn a flag speak County about the act had nothing to do with her arrest. They said Lessin was arrested be-; cause she incited a crowd to a nearriot.
Lessin, 46, of W. 25th went on trial yesterday in county Common Pleas Court on a charge of inciting violence. A member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, she burned a flag Aug. 10 during a protest against U.S. involvement in the Middle East.
That and comments led to arguing and tussling between Lessin and her supporters and counterdemonstrators, prosecutors said. As her supporters watched in Judge Patricia A. Cleary's courtroom, Lessin's lawyers, Terry Gilbert, Alan Rossman and Christopher Stanley, objected to the' judge's restrictions on the questioning of potential jurors and her com-; ments to the lawyers regarding decorum in court. In one of several sharp exchanges, Cleary cited Rossman: for contempt and fined him $50 when he continued to ask prospective jurors for their feelings about communism after Cleary had questioned them earlier on the same issue. Assistant County Prosecutor George Lonjak told the jury during the crowd indicated they had.
done sO. Juliet Elliott said she hadn't let her son go to school since September because he had been in fights at the school and chased by rival neighborhood groups on his way home. Elliott said raising four children singlehandedly gave her enough to The most recent sighting of oil-! soaked geese was reported by Painesville Township dentist Leonard Barrish, president of the Cam-1 bridge Village Condominiums, Board of Managers. "There were five of them in our' pond from Wednesday, Oct. 17, until Sunday, when they flew off." Barrish said.
"They were charcoal gray." Barrish said he last saw oilsoaked geese on the property in April. his opening statement that Lessin had put a lot of people at physical risk. "She was running through the crowd knocked and over," people Lonjak were said. getting The jury watched videotapes, of the demonstration that were taken by local television stations. Under questioning by Assistant Prosecutor Robert Coury, Cleveland Patrolman George Deli testified that he arrived at Public Square p.m.
Aug. 10 and saw 100 to 150 people gathered by the Terminal Tower. "I saw pushing, shoving and utter confusion," he said. "People were hollering and screaming very loud." Deli testified that he saw Lessin, flanked by two other women, lead a pack through the crowd. "She was moving and shoving people, and screaming obscenities," said.
Deli said he arrived after the flag was burned and was told about the act. He said people were trying to punch Lessin. "By the time she was arrested, it was a near-riot situation," he said. "But once they took her away, eryone else went away and it became peaceful." In his opening statement, Gilbert said whatever Lessin did was not a crime. "Our belief is the evidence will show this prosecution was brought to suppress the right of free he said.
"She did not urge violence. This arrest was done because she burned the flag. This was a political prosecution." The trial will continue today. If found guilty, Lessin faces up to two years in prison and a $5,000 fine. son and Eastlake offices in Mentor, where it can expand.
It has 67 existing jobs and will create 133 more. The company is receiving a abatement on its inventory over the next 10 years. FST doing business as Gran Tourismo Jaguar. It will add eight jobs the nine existing when it moves to a Perry village plant. The company received a abatement on its real estate and inventory over five years.
3M Co. of Mentor will build a new plant in Mentor. It will add 76 new jobs to the 229 existing. It will receive a abatement over 10 years on its inventory and real estate taxes. creating hazards.
O'Malley said the law, set to last one year, had a "sunset provision" allowing the city to assess its effectiveness and impact. on carriers. Charles Hesse, government affairs director for LTV Steel said the steel haulers would probably pass on the higher costs to steelmakers. "Presumably that (higher costs) will back to us," he said. Also yesterday, the Finance Committee approved a resolution declaring council's desire that Cleveland and Vilnius, Lithuania, be named sister cities.
Cleveland -recently has entered into sister-city arrangements with Bratislava, Slovakia, and plans to enter a sister-city tie with Gdansk, Poland. A delegation from Bratislava attended yesterday's council meeting. assaults, nighttime thefts of a videocassette recorder and a computer, a sexual imposition by a student upon another and the trespassing of a pupil from another school twice. Holmes said he knew of no parents who had pulled children out of the school because of safety concerns. But at least four parents in was trying to clean up the pond.
Earlier this year. an attempt to use noisemakers to scare away geese ended when complaints arose about the noise, Sandusky said. "This is the only place in the county where we've noticed problems like this," Sandusky said. Sandusky said problems at the pond abated somewhat during the summer when geese are flightless and become more serious during migration periods. 1 handle without worrying about her son's well-being at school.
"I'm one who will have to go to the hospital," she said. "I'm one who is going to have to bury him." Student attendance at East Tech for September averaged 64.6% of the enrollment, less than the same time last year, according the district. "They're kind of sad," said Bar; rish. "Lots of times they can't fly, or. swim, and they are always preening to try to clean their feathers." Ann Bugeda, chief naturalist at.
Lake Metroparks, explained that birds could sicken and die when: they ingest oil while preening. The oil also damages their natural waterproofing and insulation, causing death pneumonia and hypothermia, said..
