A former Center Middle School teacher and athletic coach, 58-year-old Jay Dana, entered a guilty plea in a Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on Monday to two reduced charges of sexual battery and one count of attempted sexual battery in three date rape cases, two of which date back to 2006.
      According to court records, one of Dana’s victims was a 42-year-old woman, and another was a 51-year-old woman. The age of the third woman could not be determined.
      The plea bargain was accepted after Dana met with his lawyer, Atty. J. Gerald Ingram last Friday.
      A sentencing hearing has been set for July 23 in the Mahoning County Common Pleas Courtroom of Judge Maureen Sweeney.
      Dana’s trial, that had been lingering in the court system for two years on three, first-degree counts of rape, had been set for July 13.
      While awaiting trial and posting a $10,500 bond, the court allowed Dana to live in Ft. Myers, Fla. and once allowed the former teacher/coach to travel to New Mexico.
      According to the plea agreement, Dana will be sentenced to 75 days in jail and will be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. According to Ohio sentencing guidelines, Dana could have faced a maximum of between three and eleven years in jail on each count of rape. Judge Sweeney does not have to accept the recommendations of the plea deal.
      In signing the plea agreement, Dana acknowledged the plea “is a complete admission of my guilt.”
      He added, “While I maintain my innocence, I acknowledge that the evidence which I have reviewed with an attorney creates a significant risk of conviction if this case were to go to trial. To avoid that risk, I freely plead guilty.”
      Evidence in the cases set before Judge Sweeney included the findings of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification that linked Dana, through semen testing, to one of the defendants.
      Dana’s counsel had filed a motion before the court on Jan. 12, 2015, seeking the bench notes of forensic scientist Erkia Jimenez.
      Dana, who had taught for more than 20 years in the Boardman Local School system, abruptly left his job on May, 20, 2011, when Supt. Frank Lazzeri said that Dana took ‘a medical leave.’
      A supplemental narrative report filed the day before, shows two Boardman police officers, Ptl. Paul Poulos and Ptl. John Gocala, went to the residence of Marie Brickley, 7464 Huntington Dr. about 7:45 p.m.
      According to the report, Brickley told Officer Gocala that a man identified as Dana, with whom she had one date, “Startled her by showing-up at her residence...unexpectedly.”
      Gocala said the woman did not want to talk to Dana and he left on foot.
      On Sept. 10, 2006, a 42-year-old woman told police she went out with Dana on a date about 6:30 p.m. While traveling to Ben’s Restaurant in Berlin Center, the woman told police Dana gave her a “cranberry and vodka” to drink, while he consumed a Coors Light beer.
      After picking-up some food, the woman told police she and Dana went back to his residence on Walnut St. in Boardman.
      Once in the driveway, according to a police report, Dana told the woman he was going to get her more to drink and “wanted to take her for a ride in his car to show her something.”
      The woman told police that Dana took her to a parking lot (she couldn’t remember where). She insisted she needed something to eat.
      At that point, according to the woman, Dana gave her a carafe, and pointing to a spot on the container, told her to “drink this much.”
      The woman said she couldn’t recall many details “beyond that point.”
      She told police she could recall a clock in Dana’s car at 7:40 p.m., “being violently sick on his floor while laying naked on her right side; Dana helping her to the bathroom where she again vomited violently, and [Dana] slapping her naked buttocks telling her to get up.”
      The woman told police that Dana “finally got [her] back to the residence, where he put her on a chair on the back porch and left.
      She said when she awoke about 6:00 a.m., she had no underwear on, and at 6:30 a.m. she called Dana and asked if they had been intimate, “because she could not recall anything.”
      According to the police report, Dana acknowledged intimacy.
      Another police report shows on Oct. 30, 2006, Dana showed-up at St. Charles Church, 7345 Westview Dr., near 10:00 a.m. looking for the woman who told police about her Sept. 10 date.
      Officer Phil Merlo was at the church within a minute of the call and placed Dana in handcuffs in the back of his cruiser while police checked on the status “of any court (protection)orders,” the woman said she held on Dana.
      “Dana was subsequently released minutes later and issued a criminal trespass warning for the property at St. Charles Church at the request of the pastoral staff,” Ptl. Merlo said.
      Mahoning County court records show on Nov. 28, 2006, a petition for a protection order against Dana and filed by Marie Humphreys, was ismissed, as the woman failed to show-up for a hearing.
      In her petition, Humphreys told the court “I went out with Jay on a date and he used a date rape drug on me...I am not allowed to say much about this, because of the investigation.”
      Dana was indicted May, 2013, on a true bill for three counts of rape, one on Sept. 10, 2006, another between July 1 and July 31, 2006; and a third on May 20, 2011.
      Each count, each first degree felonies, noted the victims lacked the ability to resist or consent, and Dana knew their ability to resist or consent was “substantially impaired.”
      Law enforcement officials are still investigating the Christmas Day, 2010 death of Dana’s second wife, Michelle, 44, at the couple’s home at 145 Canterbury, Columbiana.
      According to Michelle’s brother, Chuck Gardner, Dana and his wife were at a family Christmas Eve party on Monroeville, Pa.
      “They left Monroeville sometime between 9:00 a.m. and 9:15 a.m.,” Gardner told The Boardman News.
      The following morning, at 9:20 a.m., Jay Dana called 9-1-1 saying he awakened to find his wife “laying on the floor beside him, unresponsive,” according to a report of Columbiana County Coroner Dr. William Graham Jr.
      Graham’s report shows that Mr. Dana said he and his wife had been drinking “wine and vodka shots.”
      In his call to 9-1-1, Dana said he and his wife had been “doing a drinking game.” Dana said he last saw Michelle alive about 1:00 a.m. on Christmas Day.
      Unrelated Allegations
      In the fall of 2011, a woman who used to live in Boardman and who had moved out of the Mahoning Valley gave a statement to Boardman police about her “two week” relationship with Jay Dana.
      The woman said she met Dana while working at a local hardware store at “the end of 1998 and the beginning of 1999, where he bought a grill, and in the process obtained her phone number.
      According to the woman’s statement, Dana asked the clerk over to his house ‘off Rt. 224 behind Pheasant Dr.’ She said during the dinner that Dana was polite and she recalled “how comfortable it was talking with him. He never made any sexual advances toward me.”
      A second date was arranged, that began with Dana picking the female up at her parent’s home in Youngstown and then driving back to his home in Boardman.
      “When I got in his car, he handed me a beer that had already been opened,” the woman said, noting Dana then drove them to a bar on Rt. 224, “out past Canfield a ways.”
      The woman continued, “We sat at the bar. He ordered beer for us both. We talked for a bit and then I got up to go to the bathroom.
      “When I came back, his back was towards me, and I saw him putting something in my glass. It was a capsule he opened.
      “I asked him what he was doing and he responded ‘something like what do you mean?’
      “He brushed it off and very shortly after suggested we leave and go somewhere else.”
      The woman told police Dana and his date then drove to a bar in Niles.
      “Before we went into the bar, we sat in his car and drank another beer. He handed me a bottle he had in his car,” the woman said in the statement that was provided to Boardman and Columbiana police.
      The woman said while at the bar in Niles, she had a drink but didn’t believe she finished it because she was getting sick.
      “I don’t remember the drive back to his house...I soon as we arrived at Jay’s house, I was feeling very sick to my stomach...I started violently throwing up, and it was black. I just kept getting sick and I was thinking that something wasn’t right about this...I thought I was going to die,” the woman said.
      She said the next thing she could remember was “taking a shower...and throwing up more in the shower. I did not have any clothes on, and I don’t know how they came off,” the woman said, adding “The next thing I can remember is Jay dropping me off at [my] home the next morning.
      “He let me out of the car and that was the last time I saw or spoke to him,” the woman recalled.