Daryl Copeland, 41, pled guilty this week to charges of escape, receiving stolen property and aggravated menacing. He will be sentenced in six to eight weeks. Copeland is also involved in another case in which he pled guilty to burglary, receiving stolen property and having weapons under disabilities.
Copeland escaped from the Oberlin jail in July 1998 after being charged with aggravated menacing for writing a letter to a college student in which he threatened to rape her.
As revealed in a video tape recording, Copeland escaped the jail after being left alone in the booking area. After gauging the dispatcherıs attention, he crawled under the door and made his escape through the back door to the jail which had been left open.
Police officers were unable to find him because he closed the door after himself, throwing the officers off his track. He was later found in Cleveland sleeping in a public building.
Copeland made his mark on Oberlin by attending classes and campus events. He lived out of his van but made close acquaintance with some Oberlin residents.
In the latest development in the landlord saga, the state board of appeals has set a date for an adjudicatory hearing which could result in the city being decertified.
The Board of Basic Building Standards in Akron began a full investigation of the city and of state building inspector, Kenneth Klingshirn, in 1998 after a preliminary investigation based on charges brought by nine Oberlin landlords, claiming that the city was illegally trying to force them to adhere to safety standards that didnıt apply to their property.
³The local building department has tried to make some changes to their houses that are not allowable under the law,² said Board information officer William Teets. The Board has slated the hearing for April 14.
According to Lori Mitri, spokeswoman for the Ohio department of commerce, the likely outcomes for the hearing are that either the Board takes no action or that it decertifies the city. She said, however, that the Boardıs investigations rarely ever decertify a city. ³For it to get to this point, the board really has to have tried everything else to correct the problem,² she said.
According to Mitri, the city asked the board not to hold the hearing at all, but it had already been scheduled.
If the city were decertified, it would be unable to enforce the Ohio Basic Building Code, which it is enforcing on the landlords. City Manager Robert DiSpirito made plain that no outcome from the hearing would be disastrous, even decertification. ³Weıve still got our own laws, that doesnıt fetter us at all,² he said. ³Itıll certainly be inconvenient: folks would have to go to state for service, which was the basically the case before we certified.²
Copyright © 1999, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 127, Number 17, March 12, 1999
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