AUSTINTOWN — An Austintown man accused of stealing from the business of a recently deceased resident is due in Mahoning County Austintown Court today for a pretrial hearing.

Michael E. Spier, 67, faces a charge of theft. On Monday, he pleaded not guilty before Judge Scott Hunter, who set bond at $1,250.

An Austintown police report states the owner of Moss Bros. Supply, a plumbing equipment supply shop on Kimberly Avenue, reported May 8 that his surveillance cameras showed a man with a white beard stealing items from the outside of the store and putting them into a red Cadillac truck or SUV.

The business’s owner, David E. Moss, an Austintown resident, died unexpectedly April 18, according to his obituary in The Vindicator.

When police arrived, the man and the truck were gone, but the owners of Bodine Autoworx, just south of Moss Bros., told police they had seen the truck and offered to let police view their security cameras.

The report states the cameras showed the man taking PVC pipe and other plumbing items that were stacked in front of the business before leaving the parking lot at about 4 p.m. The cameras also picked up the truck’s license plate number, which was registered to Spier, according to the report.

The report states another officer on patrol along Kirk Road saw the vehicle pull into 6900 Kirk Road — Spier’s address, according to court records — and found the man in possession of the items that were taken from the business.

The report states the man stole four fiberglass sump pump tanks, two large PVC connectors, one short PVC pipe, and three full-length PVC pipes. The listed value on the report is less than $1,000.

The man told police he was a friend of Moss, and Moss had given him permission to take the items a month earlier, before his death. Moss’s son, David J. Moss, said he had never met the man and nobody was authorized to take anything from the business.

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