Following a nearly two-hour preliminary, District Justice Mary Jamison ruled the state had made a prima fascia case against Gerald Booher on three misdemeanor counts, and sent the case to Huntingdon County Criminal Court.
\nState Attorney General Mike Fisher announced July 2 that his office had filed the misdemeanor charges against Booher, 67, of Shirleysburg, for storing as many as 300,000 waste tires on property in Cromwell Township that Booher and his mother, Elda Myers, own.
\nPresenting the commonwealth\u2019s case to the district justice were Deputy Attorney General Andrew Thiros of the environmental crimes section and Huntingdon County District Attorney Robert Stewart III.
\nBooher, who was accompanied to the hearing by his son, David, is being represented by Pittsburgh attorney Thomas Crawford Jr.
\nPrior to the preliminary hearing, Booher was formally arraigned by Jamison. Bail was set at $5,000, unsecured.
\nDuring the hearing, the state offered three witnesses to give testimony.
\n\u2022 Special agent Rose Ann Clement of the office of attorney general\u2019s environmental crimes section, testified as to an aerial surveillance of the property which took place prior to an April 17, 2003, search of the property, after a warrant had been obtained.
\nShe reported observing the several hundred thousand tires on the property.
\n\u2022 Kristen Bardell, a water pollution biologist with the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), said she was part of the team which inspected the property in April.
\nShe said she inspected a large number of tires, and many had water and organic material in them which was a good breeding ground for mosquitoes.
\nMosquito breeding areas have been in the news the last couple of years because the insects are a carrier of the West Nile virus.
\n\u2022 Don Korzeniewski of DEP\u2019s permits division, testified there was no permit issued to store waste tires on the Cromwell Township property.
\nAs for the ownership of the property, information supplied by the attorney general\u2019s office indicated that Gerald Booher purchased the property on Aug. 19, 1966. On Jan. 26, 1994, he sold the property to the Sportsman\u2019s Club 2000.
\nPrior to the selling of the property, Booher had been ordered several times by the then DER (Department of Environmental Resources) and Commonwealth Court to remove the tires. At one time he spent time in jail for not following the court\u2019s directive to remove the tires and pay fines.
\nCrawford did not offer any witnesses, but he did object strenuously on many occasions to the introduction of exhibits by Thiros.
\nHe argued that the statute of limitations on the charges had expired, and there was no link of Booher to the ownership of the property.
\n\u201cGerald Booher is not the sportsman\u2019s club,\u201d argued Crawford.
\nBooher did not speak during the hearing.
\nAs for any relationship between himself and the tire saturated property, Booher told The Associated Press in a recent account of the charges filed against him, \u201cAll I know is it was sold … and it took the land out of my name.\u201d
\nHowever, an inquiry by The Daily News to Cromwell Township tax collector Sally Book shows the real estate property tax notice on the farm, located along Route 747, is sent to Sportsman\u2019s Club 2000 in care of Nancy Jaymes, who pays the tax bill. Jaymes is Gerald Booher\u2019s daughter.
\nThe three charges include two counts of unlawful conduct and one violation of regulations concerning permits and licenses.
\n(Staff writer Rebecca Berdar contributed to this report.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Following a nearly two-hour preliminary, District Justice Mary Jamison ruled the state had made a prima fascia case against Gerald Booher on three misdemeanor counts, and sent the case to Huntingdon County Criminal Court. State Attorney General Mike Fisher announced July 2 that his office had filed the misdemeanor charges against Booher, 67, of Shirleysburg, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}