Local News
Burglar gets prison time
GREENVILLE — With more than a half dozen charges of burglary against him – and drug charges to boot – David Mitchel McCarl’s file in the courts needed its own separate box.
Friday, after admitting to police about his string of burglaries and naming names as to who helped him, McCarl, 21, of 3 N. Second St., Greenville, was sentenced to 1 to 3 years in prison.
Greenville-West Salem Township Police Chief Dennis Stephens found McCarl, with latex gloves, at 8 a.m. Sept. 24, 2008, in the basement of 71 N. Second St. in Greenville.
McCarl was picked up for additional charges last November.
In a series of interviews, McCarl detailed a number of burglaries and implicated Bo Bartholomew in several of the crimes, police said. Bartholomew, 20, still faces charges in a handful of burglaries.
In one of their heists, McCarl told police, Bartholomew used a police scanner from his volunteer firefighter days to narrowly evade capture when they stole guns from a hunting camp on Ohle Road, Perry Township.
McCarl said he and Bartholomew burglarized a Pennsylvania Game Commission building on Old Perry Highway, Sandy Creek Township; a Sandy Creek Township home; two Ohle Road homes in New Vernon Township; and a home on Gravatt Road in Perry Township.
On his own, McCarl admitted to burglarizing a friend’s house in Worth Township and to twice stealing from his grandmother’s house on Center Church Road, Liberty Township.
McCarl stole tools, a safe for its scrap metal, TVs, a CD player, a DVD player, jewelry, coins, china, tanned deer hides and mounted deer heads, a mounted bobcat, fishing tackle, golf clubs, several rifles and shotguns, a revolver, and a video camera, police said.
He pleaded guilty to defiant trespassing and possession of drug paraphernalia in May and on Sept. 29 pleaded guilty to a consolidated count of burglary.
In seeking a light sentence, defense attorney Dan Davis said McCarl was picked up on only one or two burglaries and his client gave police information about the others.. He’s spent 318 days in jail, while the suspects he implicated have remained largely free. He also said McCarl has a significant drug problem.
Police said Bartholomew acted as an informant in a separate gun theft in which McCarl was not involved. Police said Bartholomew told them about a group of teens who were charged with stealing $40,000 worth of guns from a Perry Township woman’s home in August 2008.
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Commissioners formally move to raise sewer fees
Hermitage commissioners introduced an ordinance Wednesday to increase sanitary user fees.
Residents tapped into the Hermitage Municipal Authority lines now pay $95 a quarter. That rate will bump up to $105 a quarter on Jan. 1, under the proposed rate hike.
Two more hikes on Jan. 1, 2012, and Jan. 1, 2013, will result in the rates increasing 50 percent from the current fee. -
Water is on at Forrest Brooke
Water service has been restored at Forrest Brooke Manufactured Home Community after well problems left the 165-unit complex dry Tuesday.
A boil and conserve water advisory has been issued by the DEP and will remain in place until tests confirm the water is safe to drink, Forrest Brooke’s manager Pete Havens said.
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Storm damages trees, wires
Thunderstorms ripped through parts of Mercer and neighboring counties Wednesday night, downing trees and wires and keeping rescue workers on their toes.
A Mercer County 911 dispatcher shortly after 8 p.m. said they were busy with calls across the northern part of the county. He said there had been a few reports of trees falling on homes.
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City leaders open to talks
Sharon officials aren’t opposed to sitting down with their counterparts in Farrell to revisit the idea of combining the two struggling cities.
“It never costs a penny to talk and there’s no (idea) that’s not worth looking at,” Sharon councilman Ed Palanski said. “I think it would be foolish to oppose looking at the idea.”
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Murphy’s Law doesn’t faze regional planners
A complicated, two-day public meeting blitz in 32 counties ran headlong into Murphy’s Law in Mercer County on Tuesday.
The group Power of 32 are looking to re-write the regional map and create a grand, 15-year strategic economic plan for the 32 counties in four states that make up the Ohio River basin and greater Pittsburgh area.
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Forrest Brooke copes with water outage
Residents of Forrest Brooke Mobile Home Community in Jefferson and Lackawannock Townships woke up Tuesday morning to find they didn’t have any water.
Managers of the park could not be reached for comment, but residents said they were told they won’t get water service back for at least another month.
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City facing bleak financial reality
LaVon Saternow has been Farrell’s city manager since 1992. Shortly after she took the job, Sharon Steel, the city’s economic engine, officially closed down.
Since, the city has struggled to remain solvent and Mrs. Saternow said it is facing its worst financial crisis in her tenure.
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Near-complete addition to let man come home
Although the weather delayed the start of Penny and Paul Strechansky’s construction project by about three weeks, the end of the sawing, hammering and stapling is in sight.
“It should be done by the middle of next week,” Strechansky said of the 15-by-20 foot addition being built onto the back of his garage in Hermitage, which will be the new home of his grandson, David Johnson.
Johnson was critically injured in a car crash June 19, 2009, on what is now Interstate 376 in Lawrence County. The crash rendered Johnson, who just turned 21, blind and brain damaged. He is unable to care for himself.
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Man prison-bound for role in drug buy shooting
It may never be known for certain who fired the two fatal shots that killed a Sharon teen on Nov. 6 on Wallis Avenue during a botched drug deal, prosecutors have said.
But Christopher Swogger, 24, Sharon, was fingered by at least one other suspect as the one whose bullets killed John B. Hosey III, 18, of 422 Meek St. Swogger was sentenced Monday.
Swogger was sent to prison for 1 1/2 to 3 years for having a firearm without a license, ending his role in the criminal prosecutions of the drug deal turned shooting.
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Farrell, Sharon to revisit merger
Times are tough.
In Farrell Monday night, city council heard a grim financial report from City Manager LaVon Saternow.
“It’s not a pretty picture,” Mrs. Saternow said. “We could conceivably run out of cash by the end of the year. I don’t know how to put it more bluntly.”
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Commissioners formally move to raise sewer fees
