Police chief, 2 others shot to death
KIRKERSVILLE — The 911 caller spoke in a whisper.
Little by little, the Licking County dispatcher extracted what details she could. There was a man behind the Pine Kirk Care Center in Kirkersville. He had a shotgun.
Don’t hang up, the dispatcher implored.
Suddenly, people screamed in the background. The 911 caller yelled: “He shot the cop! He shot the cop! A shaken dispatcher asked, “Sir, is my officer down?”
Seconds later, the dispatcher sent this alert: “Officer down!”
By the end of the ordeal Friday, four people would be dead: the village police chief, a nurse, a nurse aide and the shooter. An elementary school blocks away went on lockdown and children were shuttled to a middle school, where concerned parents rushed to pick them up. The chaos that enveloped this Licking County village of about 500 people won’t soon be forgotten.
Kirkersville Police Chief Steven Eric DiSario had been on the job for just a month when he responded to the 7:50 a.m. call of a man with a gun. At 38, he had six children, and his wife is expecting a baby any day now.
He walked by the woods, where authorities say Thomas Hartless, 43, was hiding and had taken two hostages. At first, a witness told a 911 dispatcher, DiSario didn’t see Hartless.
But he eventually spotted him. In his last communication to authorities, DiSario said he had the suspect in sight. Seconds later, authorities say, Hartless fatally shot DiSario. The hostages escaped unharmed.
Hartless then headed into the nursing home and killed two employees: Cindy Krantz, 48, a nurse aide, and nurse Marlina Medrano, 46, who was Hartless’ exgirlfriend. Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp said Hartless also was found dead inside the nursing home at 205 E. Main St.
“It’s real hard,” Thorp said. “It’s a hard day for all of us.”
A witness told the dispatcher that Hartless was upset with an employee of the nursing home. “He said she ripped his guts out and everything,” he said.
Hartless had a violent history with Medrano, who had obtained three civil-protection orders against him just this year. She applied for the last on May 5, and court officials said it was still active Friday. He also was on probation for a prior domestic-violence case involving her, records show.
In various court records, Medrano detailed repeated abuse at his hands and her attempts to get him to change.
“I no longer feel that my support can help Tom with his issues,” she wrote on May 5. “I am afraid to be alone with him, that he will hurt me for good.”
Hartless’ car was found Friday at the Flying-J at I-70 and Route 158, about 1¼ mile from the scene. Authorities secured search warrants for the car, another vehicle and his home in Utica.
Utica police closed a section of Oakland Avenue in the Licking County village beginning about 9 a.m. Investigators with the Bureau of Criminal Investigation arrived about 5 p.m., said one officer, and were observed leaving about 8 p.m.
On Friday, 911 calls came from outside and inside the nursing home, where some employees and at least one resident were hiding in the basement.
One worker worried out loud that she was going to die. A dispatcher counseled those hiding on how to barricade the door, but to otherwise be quiet and not come out until an officer told them it was OK.
If necessary, the dispatcher said, they needed to fight.
“If someone comes through that door, you need to be prepared to fight for your life,” a dispatcher said.
Thorp said Friday that officers were with DiSario’s family in Pataskala to offer support.
Kirkersville Mayor Terry Ashcraft said DiSario came to his house in April and asked to be an auxiliary officer. He told the mayor he wanted to focus on schools and was determined to reduce speeding in the school zone.
The village has two parttime officers: DiSario, who was chief, and another officer who is away on military duty in Texas. It also has an auxiliary officer, the former chief who stepped down shortly after DiSario joined the department.
DiSario worked 15 to 20 hours a week; the part-time department relies on the Licking County sheriff’s office when its officers aren’t on duty.
In addition to his work in law-enforcement, DiSario worked in sales for ImproveIt Home Remodeling, said Robero Safuto, a friend who works as a carpenter for the company.
“He cared about people, and I’d come in after he’d done all his measurements and they were always perfect. The customers always raved about him,” Safuto said.
DiSario’s full-time job in sales kept him around Kirkersville most of the time, Ashcraft said. “This is tough, he said. Before becoming chief, DiSario worked as a reserve officer in the Lithopolis Police Department for a couple of months in 2013. He worked part-time at the Millersport Police Department in 2012 for about six months. He also worked at the Brice Police Department part-time for a couple of months in 2012, according to state records.
Thorp said he did not know whether DiSario fired any shots at Hartless. After the shooting, a responding deputy pulled DiSario into a cruiser and drove him to a fire station for help. He was taken to Licking Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
All of the nursing home residents were taken to local hospitals so authorities could investigate the nursing home as a crime scene.
Pine Kirk Care Center is a 24-bed facility in a converted residence, said Peter Van Runkle, executive director of the Ohio Health Care