A woman who donated a laptop to a volunteer fire department says it came back with its memory erased after two members were removed from the department.
Now she says she may have to spend several hundred dollars replacing training programs that were stored on the computer.
Lawrence County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a vandalism complaint after the woman reported that the laptop had been returned without the programs and other data she expected to find on it.
She told deputies she donated the computer to Aid Township Volunteer Fire Department in January 2025. At the time, one of the two men involved served as the department’s treasurer and deputy chief.
According to her statement, the two men frequently took a department computer home for work, and she had given them permission to take the donated laptop home instead.
Complaint Follows Department Vote
The woman told deputies that both men had recently been removed from the fire department by a majority vote. She said they were reluctant to leave and took an extended period to return department property.
When the laptop came back, she reported that its memory had been erased, leaving her unable to access training programs she valued at several hundred dollars.
She told deputies she suspected one of the men had erased the data because he was studying cybersecurity in college.
The report does not establish who erased the laptop, when it was erased or whether the data can be recovered. It also does not explain why the two men were removed from the fire department.
The available report ends with the woman’s account of the complaint and does not indicate that anyone was arrested or charged.