Students at St. John Emmanuel Lutheran School duct-tape Principal Axel Green to the gym wall Wednesday after they met a goal of raising $1,000 for the Lutheran Malaria Initiative, which supports disease control in Africa.A grand jury will convene today in Huntington Circuit Court to review criminal allegations against Huntington County Commissioner Tom Wall.
The case is being handled by Whitley County Deputy Prosecutor D.J. Sigler, serving as a special prosecutor in the investigation.
Neither he nor Huntington County Prosecutor Amy Richison would comment on the investigation, and neither would confirm or deny the reason for the grand jury’s meeting.
Officials declined to comment on the nature of the investigation, but one man called to testify said the allegations include unwanted advances toward women who worked for Wall.
Wall is president of T.D. Wall Inc., a business that has been in his family for more than 60 years. The company sells trailers, mobile homes and snowplows, as well as renting mobile homes at mobile home parks they own.
Buddy Brennan said he worked for Wall part time for about 12 years, repairing rental units and doing some maintenance work at a mobile home park Wall owns. Brennan said Wall told him that a woman who worked for him said he tried to kiss her.
Brennan’s wife also did some bookkeeping work for Wall after a series of young women who worked in his office kept quitting, Brennan said.
About a week after Wall told him about the allegations, Brennan’s wife told her husband that Wall got her drunk on Crown Royal while she was working in his mobile home office. When she left, she crashed her car within about 100 yards of the entrance, Brennan said.
Brennan said his wife could not remember anything that happened at the mobile home office and even left her purse there.
Police measured her blood-alcohol concentration at 0.18 percent, Brennan said.
“She ain’t drank in 10 years,” Brennan said. “She said, ‘He just kept offering and offering.’ ”
Brennan said he spoke with Indiana State Police investigators and was subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury today.
Wall, the 3rd District county commissioner and president of the commissioners, is up for re-election in November and faces a challenger in Democrat Kenneth “Kenny” Zuk.
In 2010, Wall ran unsuccessfully for Indiana’s 17th District Senate seat, losing to then-Whitley County Commissioner Jim Banks in the primary.
He was first elected to the Huntington County Board of Commissioners in 2008, beating two other challengers in the May primary. Wall did not return calls seeking comment.
