Massillon Patrol Officer
Eric Taylor
Posted on 08/10/2002 6:07:37 AM PDT by ResistorSister
MASSILLON (OHIO) -- A city police officer and a man he was chasing are dead, killed in a shootout at the old Agathon ballfield Friday night.
Killed were Eric Taylor, 31, a four-year veteran of the Police Department, and a still unidentified suspect.
“This is a major tragedy for our city,” said Mayor Francis Cicchinelli, who announced Taylor’s death at Massillon Community Hospital at about 11:45 p.m.
Taylor was married, with three young children.
Investigators from the Ohio Highway Patrol, Massillon Police Department and Stark County coroner’s office remained at the scene past midnight, as did the body of the suspect, a balding, white man who was driving a four-door Ford sedan with Stark County license plates. His body was covered with one sheet, another blocked the view of the more than 100 bystanders who gathered near First Street and Cherry Road NW.
The trouble began shortly before 8:30 p.m. on Route 21 and Edwards Road in Wayne County near Doylestown, according to Lt. Herb Homan, commander of the Wooster Post of the Highway Patrol.
One of his troopers had stopped the southbound Ford on Route 21 at 8:22 p.m. for speeding. The trooper talked with the driver, there was a confrontation and five minutes later, the trooper reported the car was fleeing. He chased it south, and Massillon police got involved.
The chase ended in Massillon east of Route 21, in the ballfield just south of Cherry Road.
Lt. Gary Lewis of the Highway Patrol said the man got out of his car with a high-powered semiautomatic weapon, and that he fired first at officers. At least three Massillon officers and a trooper were involved in the gunfire. He said they don’t know which officer fired the shot that killed the suspect nor do they know which shot killed Taylor.
Scott McElfresh said he was watching television in his home on Cherry Road, northeast of the scene, when he heard shots. He looked out his window and saw flashes from gunfire.
He estimated he heard four shots and then an additional 30 to 40 shots, and that he saw flashes indicating police were returning fire.
“It’s not something you expect to happen in Massillon,” he said.
Other witnesses said they heard 10 to 12 shots.
“We didn’t know if it was fireworks or gunshots,” said Dave Hodgson, who was with friends about a block to the north.
Stark County Coroner James Pritchard said the suspect died of gunshot wounds, but he won’t know how many until he does an autopsy on the man today. He’ll also do an autopsy on Taylor.
Taylor was rushed from the scene to Massillon Community moments after the shooting.
The suspect’s body remained on the corner of a field off of First Street and Cherry Road until after midnight. Police said they had not verified the man’s identification, and they wouldn’t release his name until family was notified.
Through the early morning, Taylor’s cruiser and the suspect’s car remained in the middle of the field on which The Arena is being built.
The Highway Patrol and Massillon police are sharing the investigation.
They used 44 red cups to mark shell casings and other pieces of evidence on First Street. Bright lights illuminated the scene, showing the back window of a Massillon cruiser was shattered, and glass was scattered across the street.
A helicopter from Columbus was brought in to map the crime scene.
A handful of officers not involved in the investigation showed up at the scene, some in uniform and some in street clothes, somber and stone faced. Family of other officers showed up, patted a couple of officers on the back, shook their hands and hugged them.
A police chaplain met with the family at Massillon Community.
A red tent for officers was pitched in the yard of the Massillon Recreation Center, across the street from the crime scene.
I took a traffic ticket to court because I felt the officer was wrong and won. Using a gun was never an option.
I happed to live extremely close to the Ohio border; I can see it from my house. And everyone that's ever grown up here was warned about Ohio even before they got their first learners' permit. The Ohio Highway Patrol is extremely anal about all traffic laws, and will stop you on anything they can get you on, in order to give you an amazingly expensive ticket. Driving 1mph over the speed limit will cost you a hundred bucks. That price jumps far higher for every few extra mph over you're going. (By contrast, our state police have an unwritten but commonly-known rule that they won't stop anyone at all unless they're going at least 10mph over the posted limit, and since most of our highways and interstates are posted 70mph, that means you can go 80 before they'll even blink an eye. In fact, they rarely have more than one or two cars looking for speeders in any given 40-50 mile radius, except during major holidays where the chance of drunk drivers or stupid teenagers are far more likely to be on the roads.) And they love picking on people with out-of-state plates; if you don't have Ohio tags, your chances of being let off with only a warning are approximately zero. It's all about the Benjamins.
Guess what, tpaine? CJ is right on this one. State and local traffic laws, as long as there are conducted with probable cause as the basis for a stop, are not a Constitutional issue, but are the realm of states and municipalities under the 10th Amendment. Doing 72 in a 60 is probable cause. Waco and Ruby Ridge are sound positions to decry the actions of the federal government. This, however, is NOT a position to do such. Barring other information, the guy was dead wrong here. If he wants to die for his cause, that his his business. But killing a cop for his warped perception of the cause, that is just plain immoral, wrong and insane.
The post said that it was NOT a constitutional crisis.
Then you hadn't read the posts very carefully
Pot meet kettle!!!
Stay safe; stay armed.
Wrong. It was one of your fellow libertarians who declared traffic stops a "Constitutional crisis."
Ummm, fellas? This might not be the best thread to discuss the relative merits of Czech handguns.
Wrong, Eaker. Read the deleted post #55.
Well, I admit that I was in the middle of composing a rather long reply when the thread was pulled (I HATE when that happens!), so I might have missed the last X number of posts in the process. It seemed to be getting a lot of responses very quickly.
That was Demidog(super Libertarian). I was the one who said to Betty Boop(the one who originally started the generally symapthetic thread about the guy who killed the cop) that a traffic stop was not a constitutional crisis and that I had no sympathy for the perp.
Demi then decided to chime in with some inane Libertarian idealogy about how the right to travel "unmolested" has been in common law for centuries.
JMO, but the thread was pulled because the powers that be did not want to be embarassed by Demidog's rantings.
So, your pathetic contribution to FR depends on whether they will allow you to roll around in the blood of a dead police officer?
If I owned the site, I'd put your grimy six bits back in your chubby little fist and give you the bum's rush out the door.
This one sentence blows your credibility to hell. I was in Ohio two weeks ago, driving ten miles over the speed limit, and was PASSED by Ohio state troopers.
Obviously. And there are posts made by people that seem sometimes to advocate violence that are probably just them letting off steam that could be read by some who are closer to being off the edge as advocating that. I'm sure this could have been handled differently by either side and there could have been a better outcome. Adrenaline gets flowing though on both sides, too bad a cooling-off time couldn't have been given this man by the police.
Too bad life ain't just some game, eh?
Still we can wonder and ask ourselves how the Founding Fathers would have preferred this to be handled.
Uh Demidog decided to chime in basically saying that a minor traffic stop is a constitutional crisis to him(super Libertarian).
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