Two Ohio men appeared in County Municipal Court Eastern Area Division Thursday accused in the connection of theft of items from Akenheads Dairy, including 395 lottery tickets.
Adam Lee Coburn, 19, 137 N. Market St., is charged with breaking and entering, a fourth-degree felony. According to police, early Tuesday Coburn allegedly broke out a window of the store and entered. Taken from the store were 24 cartons of cigarettes, 15 cigarette lighters, three boxes of cigarette rolling papers, two bottles of beer and 395 instant lottery tickets.
Court documents state that Coburn tossed the items out through the window, where Michael R. Mizenko, 25, 165 E. North Ave., was waiting and serving as a look out. Mizenko is charged with complicity, a fourth-degree felony.
The two men then took the lottery tickets back to Mizenkos house, hiding the other stolen items along the railroad tracks. They scratched the tickets and burned the ones that did not win.
Then later Tuesday they tried to cash one winning ticket in, first by Mizenko at Vittle Village in Unity, which refused to cash it, and then by Coburn at the Vittle Village in New Waterford, where Coburn was arrested by police. Mizenko was arrested later.
Patrolman Richard Pillsbury, one of the East Palestine police officers involved in the arrest said Thursday the police were the ones that were lucky, because the men tried to cash in a winning ticket. Also involved in the investigation were Sergeant Detective Steve Walker of the county sheriff department and East Palestine Patrolman Donald Johnson.
A Sept. 11 preliminary hearing was set for both of the men and they remain in jail on $10,000 bonds.
see crime does,t pay...............Skony