Woman gets 30 days for theft after flood

A 35-year-old Taneytown woman was sentenced this week to 30 days in jail for theft of more than $6,200 of jewelry from an Ellicott City antiques shop that flooded in July 2016, according to the Howard County state’s attorney’s office. Melissa Lynn Poole of the 4000 block of Baptist Road entered an Alford plea in Howard County Circuit Court on Thursday, the state’s attorney’s office said. Defendants make such as plea in which they don’t admit guilt but agree that the state has sufficient evidence to convict them. At the time of the flood, the state’s attorney’s office said, Poole worked for Servpro, a disaster restoration firm. Poole was deployed to Antiques ’n Things on Main Street for several weeks, the office said. According to the state’s attorney’s office,the owner discovered missing items and county police investigators later found that Poole had pawned them in Westminster and Frederick. She will serve her sentence, which was reduced from five years to 30 days, over the next 15 weekends. She will then be placed on three years of supervised probation and ordered to pay $1,200 restitution for a watch that was not recovered. An attorney listed for Poole in court records had no comment when contacted Friday.