3 dead in Mississippi Co. (MO) identified; missing person report led to hours-long standoff

MISSISSIPPI COUNTY, Mo. (KFVS) - The sheriff has identified the three men who died in Mississippi County.

Mississippi County Sheriff Britton Ferrell identified the first victim as Gerard Essner, 62, who is from the Benton, Chaffee, Oran area.

The Sikeston Department of Public Safety confirmed one of its officers was killed in the line of duty on Oct. 6 while responding to the standoff.

Sheriff Ferrell said the man who barricaded himself inside the home was 36-year-old Nathan B. Peters.

According to the sheriff, Peters lives at the home, and Essner was harvesting soybeans on the property next to the home.

This isn't really "close" to me, but, close enough.

I'm also in a rural area, a little more populated than the scene of the incident in this story, and we hear shots from time to time, sometimes of the type that make me "wonder" a bit. I mean, I've had to put down varmints, and one time a large aggressive dog that came at me on my property, but, I've NEVER rattled off several shots of semi-auto fire quickly, even though I have guns capable of it. When I hear over a dozen rapid shots from something clearly at least .30 caliber, the thought, "what the heck is going on?" does come to mind. That said, I don't go investigate, and, usually the shots end fairly quickly, and, that's that. No LEO's show up, and all is ok (I think!)

THIS incident certainly reinforces a "maybe stay in the house for a bit" thought. (We have a masonry house.)

Prayers for the Officer and the Farmer, and for their families. May they RIP, and may the perp burn in Hell, but I do also say a prayer for his family.

In this neck of the woods, a lot of older farmhouses used to be rented out to people who were manufacturing and/or dealing drugs, but more and more landowners are just demolishing them and returning the land to crops. In the long run, it saves time and money, and they no longer have to deal with troublemakers.

The people who outright bought or inherited houses/acreages are pretty much impossible to budge unless the gov't gets involved due to drugs, mental illness or child neglect, etc... and that is often when the fireworks start. Some of these places are incredibly run down, overgrown and otherwise trashed, and they tend to let the flotsam creep out into adjacent farm fields, which can lead to confrontations too.

Morals to the story:

When you’re a civilian and you hear gunshots, if it ain’t your property, call someone (LEO).

When you’re LEO and you’re responding to an armed shooter, “cover”. I don’t state that lightly or sarcastically.

Tragic. The lack of details is curious, but I literally watched a yt vid not long ago about an eerily similar story where the guy just snapped and an officer was killed.

I had to scroll through my history back through August, but I found the video

Bodycam: Cop Stumbles Into Death Trap
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpowRuLfKwQ

We are not THAT rural / isolated. Our place is right at the intersection of 2 state highways. I’d guess 60 adults live within a 1/5 mile radius of us. (That’s 60 adult residents, not 60 residences.) It thins out beyond that, and away from the roads. That 60 doesn’t count the various employees, drivers, etc., associated with the 5 grain silos across the road from us. Often (and usually overnight there is no-one there, but occasionally there are several people there. Nor does the 60 count the auto traffic passing by, which (pause for quickie “in my head math”) would be, oh, maybe 2 additional people within 1/5 mile of our house at any given time during daytime, and, oh, maybe around 1500 people passing by in a 12 hour day, maybe call it 2000 in a full day/night. This is a modest income area - we have quite our share of drunks, an occasional nutcase*, and there have been drug busts a few times in 30+ years, but none I know of within 1/5 mile of us. MOST people near us are nice, but not all.

*We also live a few miles away from a school shooting that claimed 3 lives and injured 6 others, one of whom is a lovely gal, permanently paralyzed from (IIRC) just below her shoulders. My boss’ son was attending that day, fortunately for him he was not immediately in the line of fire, but, I’ll never forget the look on my boss’ face when word of the shooting 1st came, and he rushed out to race to the school.

I also in a previous part of my life was around drunks behaving recklessly with guns a few times. Not a lot, mind you, but enough to know such people can be quite dangerous, whether they mean to be or not.

OTOH, I’ve stuck with fishing at a local pond while a dove hunt involving maybe 20 hunters was going on around me and the pond, because I trust those guys to not be drunk and to at shoot doves, not me. (If I suspected anybody was drunk, I’d have reported them to the sheriff, and leave, but another hunter would prolly beat me to it.)

(I can faithfully report that shot falling into the water from some guys on the other side of the trees did not attract bluegill. ;-) -————)

So... If you are gonna call me a stupid Karen for thinking “what the heck is going on?” when some good ol’ boy or gal with who knows what happening opens up maybe 800 ft. down the road with a dozen or maybe a few dozen shots at 11:20 pm, or whenever, which stands out because it’s not a normal occurrence, and happens only a few times a year at most... I suggest you reconsider.

Now, I could have and possibly should have been a lot more rude, but I counted to 20. :-)

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