Daniel Fitzgerald sits with Public Defender John Watters before Tuesday’s hearing.
Nick McWilliams reporting – A man alleged to have been involved with the dumping of Amber Sherrell’s body had his initial arraignment on Tuesday.
The 38-year-old Daniel Fitzgerald, who has recently been incarcerated in the Lorain Correctional Institution for a probation violation, appeared before Tuscarawas County Common Pleas Judge Michael Ernest, after a previous video arraignment had to be rescheduled.
During the proceeding, Tuscarawas County Assistant Prosecutor Scott Deedrick called Fitzgerald a classic flight risk, and urged the court to place him under a $50,000 cash assurance bond, with his release from Lorain scheduled to roughly a month.
“This is not his first violation of PRC. In fact, he had just served another one at the end of 2021. He has a long criminal history. Of particular concern to the issue of flight risk, he has a conviction of attempted escape, escape, and five separate convictions of failing to register an address based on a sexual offense.”
Fitzgerald is facing three felonies including two tampering with evidence charges and gross abuse of a corpse, along with a misdemeanor count of failure to report a death.
Deedrick went on to note that they discovered a warrant for his arrest for failure to appear, has numerous convictions in Franklin and Summit Counties, and other obstruction charges.
Ultimately, Public Defender John Waters, who was assigned to be Fitzgerald’s attorney, asked for a personal recognizance bond and GPS monitoring.
Ernest sided with Deedrick, and upped the bond total to $75,000.
“I simply could not just go with a personal recognizance bail, which is, essentially, a promise by someone to appear in the future. While GPS bracelets are good, I find they basically just let people know once someone has stopped complying, we know they’re gone. That doesn’t help us after they’re gone.”
The decision prompted Fitzgerald to shake his head at Ernest, who also made statements under his breath while leaving the courtroom.
A pre-trial conference has been scheduled for June 10th at 8:15 a.m.
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