AKRON
Jazz fest tonight
AKRON: The city’s first blues and jazz festival of the season will be at 7 tonight at Lock 4 in downtown Akron.
Aces and Eights will be the first band to perform at the Lockbottom Blues & Jazz Club. Food will be provided by downtown’s Urban Eats.
A schedule of Lock 4 events is available at http://www.lock3live.com.
The 64th annual Italian-American Societies Festival will begin at 11 a.m. Friday and continue until 9 p.m. Sunday at Lock 3 downtown. The festival will feature 100 vendors of Italian foods, beverages and wares. The event also will include fireworks at 10 p.m. Saturday, after the premier of the 25 Hill Soap Box Derby movie at the Akron Civic Theatre, Soap Box Derby cars on display, a wine tasting, pizza eating contest, make-your-own pasta demonstration and hands-on children’s entertainment.
For more information on the festival, visit http://www.it-am.org.
More than 44,000 people attended the city’s Rib, White and Blue festival held over the Fourth of July weekend, including 18,000 who went to the Akron Symphony Orchestra concert and scaled-back fireworks held at Lock 3 Monday night.
BATH TOWNSHIP
McDonald’s crash
BATH TWP.: A Copley Township man is accused of being drunk and crashing his pickup truck into a McDonald’s drive-through menu board.
Ben Earl Sherbert, 44, is charged with drunken driving after the crash behind the McDonald’s restaurant on Medina Road in Bath Township. He is to appear Friday in Akron Municipal Court.
According to officer Dan Reilly’s report, a 2001 Chevrolet pickup entered the restaurant parking lot from the wrong direction and struck the menu board, a speaker and another vehicle with two people inside.
A test showed Sherbert’s blood-alcohol level at 0.121 percent. According to police, Sherbert told officers he had had four drinks at a bar and was receiving oral sex from a woman who was actually driving his truck.
Police and witnesses could not confirm his account.
COVENTRY TWP.
Couple stabbed
COVENTRY TWP.: A Coventry Township man and his female companion were stabbed early Monday, according to Summit County sheriff’s deputies.
The 37-year-old man and the 32-year-old woman were being treated at Summa Akron City Hospital. Both were in stable condition, deputies said.
Teri Garko, 36, of Akron, is accused of entering the man’s home on Stahl Road about 1 a.m., grabbing a knife and confronting the victims in an upstairs bedroom. The man was stabbed in the right thigh and the woman, twice in the chest. A spokesman said the knife just missed penetrating the woman’s lung.
The man was able to restrain his assailant and remove her from the room, deputies said.
Garko was at the home when deputies arrived. She is being held in the Summit County Jail on charges of attempted murder and felonious assault.
At the time of the stabbing, Garko was free on bond in an unrelated assault case that is pending in Summit County Common Pleas Court.
GREEN
Bath salt abuse
GREEN: A Barberton man is accused of abusing so-called bath salts and assaulting a woman during a confrontation in a motel room.
Robert Jennings, 33, was being held in the Summit County Jail on charges of abusing harmful intoxicants, assault and obstructing official business.
He was treated at Akron General Medical Center after his arrest Saturday.
Sheriff’s deputies were called to a Corporate Woods Parkway motel in Green about 10 a.m. A woman there alleged she had been struck several times by Jennings, who had already left the scene.
Deputies tracked his vehicle to the Briarwood Apartments complex, but could not find him.
Later in the day, deputies spotted a suspicious vehicle in the area and saw a man running away.
Jennings was taken into custody after a brief chase. Deputies said he was screaming and acting peculiar, and admitted abusing a form of bath salts, a recreational, synthetic drug.
Deputies also arrested Jennings’ mother, Teresa Marshal, 50, of Akron, who was charged with obstructing official business.
SUMMIT COUNTY
Petitions certified
AKRON: The Summit County Board of Elections on Tuesday certified all of the candidates who filed petitions last week.
The board, however, asked Summit County Assistant Prosecutor Mike Todd to look further into a question on the petition of James G. Nuznoff, a Ward 2 Tallmadge council candidate. Nuznoff, who circulated some of his own petitions, did not put his address on a circulator statement on one of his petitions.
Todd told the board he thinks this error isn’t critical because Nuznoff filled out the information on another petition. He plans to verify this and report back to the board at its next meeting on Tuesday.
Nuznoff, a Republican, was the only person to file to run for this council seat. Incumbent Gene Stalnaker isn’t running for re-election.
The other seats up this year in Tallmadge and Norton also were uncontested for the Sept. 13 primary, which means the candidates automatically will advance to the Nov. 8 general election.
PORTAGE COUNTY
Crash kills two
WINDHAM TWP.: Two people were killed in a car-truck crash at state Route 303 and Stanley Road at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday.
The Ravenna post of the State Highway Patrol reported the crash involved a Ford Taurus and a Kenworth dump truck driven by a Warren man.
The truck was traveling west on state Route 303 when it struck the eastbound Ford Taurus on the passenger side as it turned north onto Stanley Road. The car slid off the north side of the road.
The two occupants of the Taurus were killed. Their names have not been released.
STARK COUNTY
Clunk honored
ALLIANCE: Judge R.R. Denny Clunk was awarded the Lifetime Achievement award from the Ohio Association of Probate Judges.
Clunk was admitted to the bar in 1955 and served as Stark County’s probate judge from 1985 until retiring in 2003. He continues to hear cases throughout Ohio as a visiting judge assigned by the Ohio Supreme Court.
He also was president of the National College of Probate Judges.
Also honored at the Probate Judges’ annual summer meeting in Columbus was Dixie Park, who has served as Stark County probate judge since 2004. She received a Meritorious Service Award for her work as secretary of the association and its executive committee and as a committee head.
Park was sworn in as the association’s second vice president by Ohio Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor.
WADSWORTH
Planners vote
WADSWORTH: The Planning Commission Tuesday recommended that City Council adopt a comprehensive plan for the city.
The plan, in development for two years, will replace one in place since 1996.
The new plan is expected to serve as a guide for territorial, economic and demographic development of Wadsworth until 2025.
Two public hearings were held by the commission on the proposed plan and after comments by council members, a few changes were made before the commission recommended its adoption.
The latest changes include adding some language concerning future annexations and possibly providing incentives for redevelopment projects which reuse or will improve existing infrastructure and services.
The commission also approved the final component to allow the development of an assisted living facility on the east side of State Road.
The facility will be built on the site of what was to be a condominium complex named Britestone; only a few of the units were completed. The final component approved by the commission will allow four units of Britestone to be a separate condominium development.
Jerry McClain Co. plans to build a 77-bed assisted living unit as a first phase and a 23-bed Alzheimer’s unit as a second.
