City Clerk Accused Of Stealing From Kohl's

CONYERS, Ga.,None — A metro Atlanta city clerk is under arrest on charges that she stole from her part time job at the Kohl's in Conyers.

Tonya Grier worked for the city of Covington for nearly 20 years, many of them as city clerk.

Police said she stole from the Kohl's store where she’d worked part-time for 11 years.

Police said they got a call from store security after Kohl's noticed suspicious return receipts.

A review of store videotapes showed Grier allegedly handling genuine customer returns and then adding on fraudulent returns for which she kept the money. It added up to about $113.

Conyers police said Grier confessed.

“She indicated she’d been doing it for about four months, but we found three transactions in July and those are the three charges she faces currently,” said Conyers criminal investigations Lt. Jackie Dunn.

Grier made $69,000 a year in her Covington city clerk job. The Covington city manager told Channel 2’s Diana Davis that Grier was a trusted employee and that he and other city workers are in shock.

Grier was put on paid administrative leave Aug. 1, about 10 days after her arrest. The Conyers city manager told Davis that he expects her to keep receiving her city salary.

“There is a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Yes, you have an incident report that outlines details, but a court has not made a disposition on that yet,” said Steve Horton.

Horton said the city has turned up no evidence of wrongdoing while Grier was on the job in Covington. He said the city is investigating.

“I’m not a predictor of the future. There might be something out there we don’t know that could occur that we would like to look into first,” said Horton.

Conyers police told Davis that they don’t expect Grier to have her day in court for up to six months.

WSBTV