EAST PEORIA Ill. – A local travel softball coach pleads not guilty to stealing more than six-thousand dollars of team finances.
Jessica McMichael coached the 10-U travel softball team, the East Peoria Central Illinois Patriots, last summer.
Towards the end of the season, parents started noticing money was disappearing from team funds — with promised equipment and uniforms never being delivered — despite taking payment.
Emma McMullen is a parent of one of the players and told 25News, it just didn’t make sense.
“I need this amount of money and this is the uniforms you are going to get. You’ll get this many shirts and this many pants and this many belts. So, we paid all of that, and come to find out we only got a third of what she said we were getting,” Emma McMullen said.
Court documents indicate more than $14,000 was collected from parents — with around $6,000 of it being unaccounted for.
McMichael faces felony count of theft exceeding $500.
The Tazewell County State Attorney’s Office did not ask to hold McMichael in jail while she waits for her trial.
She joined Thursday afternoon’s arraignment hearing through a Zoom call from home.
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