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WARREN -- A Trumbull County jury on Monday acquitted a former manager at a Warren Family Dollar store of stealing a day's worth of deposits totaling about $3,600.
Jurors took less than 45 minutes of deliberations before finding Melissa W. Nutter innocent of one count of fifth-degree felony theft.
Nutter, 43, of West Dennick Avenue, Youngstown, had faced up to one year in prison, but she left the courtroom in tears, a free woman who had lost her job at Family Dollar where she had worked for nine years.
The case centered around a missing deposit Aug. 22, 2021, from the Family Dollar store on West Market Street.
Family Dollar district manager Frank Sturgis testified he was following up on an alert about missing money that came to the corporate loss prevention office in Buffalo. Sturgis told assistant Prosecutor Gina Thomas that surveillance video showed an employee, identified as Nutter, handling the deposit bag that contained more than $3,600.
Nutter just had transferred to the West Market Street location from the Elm Road NE store where she worked as "an exemplary employee," Sturgis said.
"The crew thought highly of her," Sturgis told jurors about Nutter's previous reputation.
Sturgis said he didn't get to talk to Nutter about the incident because she had left for a leave of absence.
During cross examination by public defender Carlo Ciccone, Sturgis admitted that another employee had been accused of theft from the West Market Street store on another occasion.
Nutter took the stand in her own defense and told jurors that employee also was working in the store on the day of the missing deposit. Nutter said she last saw the deposit bag when it was put into a white basket that is placed into a safe.
Under questioning from her attorney, Nutter denied taking the money.
Sturgis told jurors the regular daily procedure is for store managers to count the money after closing, place the deposit bag into the store safe and then take it to the bank for deposit the next day. Huntington Bank did not record a deposit for Aug. 22, Sturgis stated, but a bank log had a total of more than $3,600.
Nutter stated it was the first time she ever had been in trouble and was terminated from her job -- even though she was not brought in for questioning by law enforcement.