Up-skirt videos, potential Kroger worker strike and pop-up bars after mass resignation
After knock-down, drag-out fights over congressional and legislative maps, state politics reporter Laura Bischoff reported that Republican lawmakers will turn their attention to redrawing the state's appellate court district lines. When? Either later this year or next legislative session. It matters, Bischoff explains, because new appellate district lines could change the political makeup of courts and, thus, the decisions that are made in them. It used to be that appellate judicial candidates ran on nonpartisan ballots, but that changes this year.
It was a banner week for strange crime news. On Wednesday, crime reporter Bethany Bruner wrote that a Columbus Alternative High School chemistry teacher was arrested Tuesday in Delaware County after authorities accused him of taking up-skirt videos of female students and others for the past seven years. Justin R. Foley, 47, was arrested after authorities say he admitted to having more than 5,000 images and more than 160 videos of child pornography on his cellphone and other electronic devices, according to court records. He has been suspended without pay, according to the school district. A day earlier, crime reporter Cole Behrens learned that a man accused of hiding under female Ohio State students' beds has a history of voyeurism. The man, Aaron Kastein, 42, of Springfield, Ohio, was arrested for felony burglary in connection to a July 30, 2021, incident in which authorities accused him of watching two female students undress from under a bed in their University District home.
On Friday, business reporter Mark Williams wrote about how Kroger and its union workers at stores throughout the Columbus area and other parts of Ohio have agreed to go back to the negotiating table Tuesday after workers rejected the company's latest contract proposal. The workers' contract expired Aug. 6, and union members recently rejected the latest tentative deal struck between the union and the company and also authorized a strike.
Former Ohio State running back Antonio Pittman's first love might have been football, but he wasn't shy in sharing his passion about his second career — firefighting — with Assistant Sports Editor Lori Schmidt: "The job itself is very rewarding. It takes a lot of patience. It showed me a lot about myself. It put life in a different perspective, for sure. I would say it's one of the best jobs in the world, but one of the worst advertised."
What do you do if you're a bartender without a bar to tend? Well, if you're Brock Kalbfleisch, who was fired from The Bottle Shop, a cocktail bar and market in the University District, in June, you form the "Walkout Collective," an eight-member collaboration that has hosted a handful of well-attended pop-up cocktail events across the city. He was joined in the effort by seven colleagues of his at The Bottle Shop who quit in solidarity with Kalbfleisch.
For a look back at these and other stories through the week, be sure to visit Dispatch.com and catch up on all events.
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Interim managing editor
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Your week in Columbus: A newsletter for Dispatch subscribers
