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Man caught downloading child pornography
Dewine faces pressure to lift Ohio’s mask mandate. 4B
A former instructional aide and coach at the Westerville City School District was placed on probation Thursday for a 2018 child-porn-sharing case.
Donte M. Martin, 31, formerly of Columbus and now residing in Pataskala, pleaded guilty in January to a felony charge of pandering sexually oriented material involving a minor.
Martin was caught downloading and sharing child pornography during an investigation by the Franklin County Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
Prosecutors said Martin did not produce any of the images, nor was there evidence that he victimized any children in the Westerville district.
Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Sheryl Munson placed Martin in probation for four years. He faces four years in prison if he violates probation, she said.
The conviction also means he must register as a sex offender every six months for the next 25 years.
Prior to his arrest in October 2018, Martin was an employee of the Educational Service Center of Central Ohio who had first been assigned to work in Westerville city schools in 2016.
He was an instructional aide at Blendon Middle School during the 2016-17 school year and an instructional aide at Walnut Springs Middle School for the 2017-18 and 2018-19 school years.
Martin coached wrestling and eighth-grade football at Walnut Springs during the 2017-18 school year, and was coaching seventh-grade football at Walnut Springs in the 2018-19 school year when he was arrested.
He also had served as an assistant girls’ track coach at Blendon Middle School since 2016. jfutty@dispatch.com @johnfutty
After changing how it reports COVID-19 fatalities, state health officials added 752 deaths to Ohio’s pandemic toll on Friday.
After more than 4,000 deaths were not reported and later added, the state on Tuesday began relying solely on death-certificate reporting data to detect and report COVID-19 deaths, resulting in a temporary reduction of 596 deaths, many of which appeared to return Friday.
Deaths now will only be reported on Tuesdays and Fridays, instead of daily, as federal officials vet and approve death certificates listing the virus as the cause of death. After three days of not reporting deaths this week, the state added 752 on Friday, but officials said 428 deaths were people who reported their primary addresses in Ohio, but died out of state, after the state made new inquiries of other states.
Ohio’s total deaths in the year-old pandemic now totals 17,656, including 467 residents of other states who died in Ohio. The state reported 1,750 new COVID-19 infections on Friday, below the three-week daily average of 1,976, boosting the cases in the pandemic to 976,230. Dropping below 1,000 for the first time since mid-october, 919 virus patients were hospitalized after 87 new admissions were reported.
The number of virus victims needing hospital care has dropped by 79% over the past two months.
Another 69,309 vaccinations were reporting, raising the total to 1,871,969 or 16.0% of Ohio’s population.
A total of 1,025,941, or 8.8% of the population, now have received second and final doses. rludlow@dispatch.com @Randyludlow