Gunman kills police chief, 2 employees of Ohio nursing home

KIRKERSVILLE, Ohio — An armed man gunned down a new village police chief on an Ohio street on Friday then killed two employees in a nearby nursing home, where he later was found dead, a sheriff said.

The slain police chief, Steven Eric Disario, had headed the Kirkersville Police Department for only about three weeks, Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp said. Disario was shot on a street near the Pine Kirk Care Center, and the two female employees and the gunman were found dead inside, Thorp said.

Authorities identified the gunman as Thomas Hartless, 43, of the nearby village of Utica. The employees were Marlina Medrano, a nurse, and 48-year-old Cindy Krantz, a nurse’s aide. Medrano’s age was not available

Disario, 36, was a father of six children, with a seventh on the way, the sheriff said. Flowers and flags appeared in an impromptu memorial outside the village police hall, located less than a block from the site of the shooting.

“We’ve lost a police officer. It’s just a tragic event,” said Thorp. “I guess the only peace of mind is that the threat is over.”

Thorp said the gunman was in a wooded area behind the nursing home when he encountered two passers-by, whom he temporarily took hostage.

Disario, responding to a report of a man with a gun, apparently encountered the gunman in that area. The chief’s last radio communication said he had the man in sight. When a shot was fired at the chief, the hostages escaped unharmed.

“We don’t know the cause or the purpose or what drove this individual to do this,” Thorp said.

Some of the nursing home’s 23 residents barricaded themselves during the shooting, but none of them was injured, he said. All were relocated to other facilities until investigators were out of the nursing home.

Kirkersville is a village of about 500 residents, roughly 40 kilometres east of Columbus.