Police chief, 2 nursing home employees shot, killed in Ohio

Village chief had been on job for only 3 weeks.

KIRKERSVILLE, OHIO — An armed man gunned down a new village police chief Friday and then killed two employees in a nearby nursing home, where he later was found dead, a sheriff said. No nursing home residents were injured.

The slain police chief, Steven Eric Disario, had headed the Kirkersville, Ohio, Police Department for only about three weeks, Licking County, Ohio, 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.

Disario, 36, was a father of six children, with a seventh on the way, the sheriff said.

Thorp called it a hard day for all.

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

Flowers and flags appeared in an impromptu memorial outside the village police hall.

Thorp said the gunman had been 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, Thorp said.

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.

Responding officers found Disario on the street and then investigated a report of a gunman at the nursing home, Thorp said.

Some nursing home residents barricaded themselves during the shooting, but none of them was injured, he said.

Police weren’t immediately able to identify the gunman and were trying to determine what, if any, relationship he had with the nursing home, Thorp said. The facility is secure, and it’s unclear how the gunman got in, he said.

The shooting closed down the main street in the village, which was flooded with police officers from several surrounding agencies and with ambulances. The village of about 500 residents is roughly 25 miles east of Columbus.

“This is a really small town, and everybody knows everybody,” Kirkersville resident Debbie Messer told the Columbus Dispatch. “These things don’t happen here.”

A woman who works about a block away said she heard gunshots followed by screaming and then sirens.

“You could hear a guy yelling,” Kathy Rogers said. “He was yelling and screaming. I’m not really sure what he was saying, it was like a block away. It was just a nightmare.”

The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is leading the probe into what happened.

Gov. John Kasich ordered flags flown at half-staff in Licking County and the Statehouse and expressed his condolences in a tweet.

TOM DODGE / THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH Authorities say Steven Eric Disario, who headed the Kirkersville Police Department, and two nursing home employees were killed by a gunman who was later found dead inside the Pine Kirk nursing home in Kirkersville, Ohio, on Friday.

WAYNE BAKER / STAFF An officer talks to a witness after the shootings. Police were trying to determine what, if any, relationship he had with the nursing home.