Friday, December 31, 1999
Woman with hard-luck story gets items meant for fire aid
Rules tightened at Union Twp. donation center
BY STEVE KEMME
The Cincinnati Enquirer
UNION TWP. — Township officials suspect that a woman might have tricked a donations center for victims of a Dec. 23 apartment fire in Butler County into giving her three shopping carts of new clothes and a television.
The woman had worked as a volunteer at the warehouse at 8886 Beckett Road for three hours Wednesday when she told a supervisor there that her Lincoln Heights house had been flooded by a sewer line break, said Township Administrator David Gully.
The supervisor allowed her to take three shopping carts of new clothes and a TV set from the warehouse.
On the way to her car, the woman told another worker that she was a victim of the Dec. 23 fire and gave a false apartment number, Mr. Gully said.
A township employee followed the woman in his car, but had to give up when she began speeding, he said.
Metropolitan Sewer District officials told the township that there had been no sewer line break at the woman's house, he said.
The township alerted Lincoln Heights police.
After talking to police, the woman called Mr. Gully and insisted she was a flood victim.
“She offered to bring stuff back and to give us a check for $50,” Mr. Gully said. “I told her it wasn't necessary if her need was genuine.”
He said township officials haven't decided whether to press criminal charges.
As a result of this incident, a police officer has been posted at the warehouse entrance, and the donations center is requiring that fire victims be certified by the Red Cross.
The donations operation is a joint venture of the township, the American Red Cross and the Key Foundation.
The warehouse is privately owned.
The Dec. 23 blaze, which authorities believe was caused by a kitchen grease fire, destroyed the apartments of 55 families at Woodbridge on the Lake.
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