Hartford woman arrested on felony theft from school pizza fund-raiser

The Hartford Police have made an arrest on a woman who allegedly stole nearly $1,400 from the Parents Club at Hartford Elementary School.

The woman – Candi Eyer – was arrested after a lengthy investigation and charged with felony theft in a school fund-raiser. The case has been turned over to the Madison County State’s Attorney’s office. Hartford Police Sgt. Brandon Flanigan was the lead person on the investigation. He said the case involved a lot of probing.

“I have had serious felony cases I have investigated that were not as difficult as this,” he said. “The issue I had with it is there was no accountability after the kids collected the money in the pizza fund-raiser. The kids turned it into a teacher, the teacher turned it in to a secretary and the secretary dropped it off with the suspect. I had to be able to prove she was the only one that took the money. Just getting it over that to make it beyond a reasonable doubt type of case was the hard part.”

A new group started leading the Parents Club in Hartford and noticed that there was money missing and brought it to the attention of the Hartford Police Department.

“Miss Ayer refused to confess and denied her involvement,” Flanigan said oabout the start of the investigation. “She put the blame on new club members and the school and we brought her in one last time with a polygraph and after that we got her to confess she took the money to pay off some bills and things.”

Flanigan, a member of the Hartford Police Department team for 12 years, said a lot of people in Hartford are upset with the pizza fund-raiser theft.

“My kids grew up here and did fund-raisers and I know first hand how hard it is,” he said of raising money through the different ways for school causes. “Basically she took all the cash and deposited the checks. Any time a kid turned in a check, she deposited those and used the cash to pay off her other debt.”

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