Free Republic

MASSILLON, OH — Voting at Smith Elementary School in Massillon was delayed for a brief time this morning because a poll worker’s car, containing a voter signature book, ballot transfer case and paper canisters, was stolen just as she was preparing to drive to the polling location. Massillon police reports indicate the poll worker, a 2nd Street Northeast woman, had started the car to warm it up around 5 a.m. and went back inside her residence for a moment. When she returned, she saw a man wearing a yellow shirt in the driver’s seat. When she yelled at the man,...

A letter discovered over the weekend at a makeshift memorial for Eric B. Taylor, the 31-year-old Massillon patrolman killed in a shootout Friday night, defends his killer and predicts that more police officers will die in traffic stops. READ ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE

JuWanna Taylor, widow of slain Massillon Patrolman Eric B. Taylor, is finding the strength to cope from the most precious gifts her husband gave her: their two young children. ``My children are what have kept me going,'' Taylor said Tuesday at the family's home in Massillon. ``You have to put you on the back burner. They need their mother.''Taylor, 31, said she has tried to keep her children, Ty, 2, and Lauren, 1, as close to their regular daily schedules as possible since her husband was shot and killed Friday night while on duty. Eric Taylor, 31, joined the Massillon...

MASSILLON — A 61-year-old man in a straw hat led a state trooper and then city police on a chase that ended in a hail of gunfire when the man whipped out a high-powered Czechoslovakian military weapon and fired away Friday night. Investigators are continuing to piece together what started out as a seemingly routine traffic stop for a speeding violation and ended 12.3 miles and 12 minutes later in a double shooting that left a police officer, Eric Taylor, and the suspect, Donald W. Matthews, dead. On Saturday, authorities released more information to a stunned and grieving community. Mayor...

A motorcycle and a car remain parked in the double-car garage. A black iron eagle is mounted above the door of the white ranch-style home with navy vinyl shutters. At the end of a cozy Massillon street, the home, once filled with a young family’s joy, has become a place of mourning. JuWanna Taylor, widow of slain Massillon police officer Eric Taylor, is surrounded by family – her two children, her mother and her brother, David Jones. Jones said his sister, JuWanna and her two children, Ty, 2, and Lauren, 1, are faring well in the wake of the Friday...

CANTON — Dwight Class said it didn’t have to end this way for Donald Matthews and the Massillon police officer whom he shot and killed. Class said Patrol Officer Eric Taylor and the other officers and state trooper who were part of a fatal police chase Friday night did not have the authority to pull Matthews over on a traffic stop. Or to pursue and attempt to arrest him. Class attends the meetings on constitutionality that Matthews used to lead before he died in the shootout with police that started with a traffic stop on Route 21 in Doylestown and...

<p>Donald W. Matthews, fed up with government and distrustful of its authority, once told his wife no policeman should ever try to stop him.</p> <p>"He said he would kill the first police officer who tried to give him a ticket or tried to take him to jail," said Sgt. James Mizeres, a Massillon, Ohio, police detective who interviewed Matthews' wife, Catherine.</p>

<p>A former Dormont man killed a police officer in the Canton, Ohio, area Friday night before dying himself in a shoot-out with police, Ohio authorities said.</p> <p>Donald W. Matthews, 61, from Jackson Township, north of Canton, fled a traffic stop and ended up shooting a patrolman from nearby Massillon, said the Ohio Highway Patrol.</p>

JACKSON TWP. -- He believed that the U.S. Constitution is the governing force of the people. And he carried an imported semiautomatic military handgun. He refused to pay personal income taxes, at least three times. In a Web site posting in May 2000, Donald W. Matthews protested “unconstitutional and onerous gun laws” in the United States. He tried to gather support to petition the U.S. Supreme Court about citizens’ gun rights. His screen name was “Broom Handle.” Even so, friends of 61-year-old Jackson Township man struggled Saturday to understand what led him to flee police, bail out of his moving...

Friends of Donald W. Matthews, a 61-year-old former Steelworker who quoted the U.S. Constitution like a preacher thumbing a worn Bible, say he was suspicious of government.But nobody knows why he chose a routine traffic stop Friday night to make his final stand, fatally shooting a Massillon police officer in the back before he was killed himself in return gunfire.He might have been returning home from a constitutionalist study group in Cleveland when a state trooper pulled him over for speeding.The trooper stopped him near Edwards Road in the short stretch of state Route 21 that crosses Wayne County. It...

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...

Ex-Phila resident Class is arrested A former New Philadelphia resident, who last week defended the actions of an outspoken constitutionalist accused of killing a Massillon police officer, was taken into custody at Dover Monday afternoon. Dwight Class, 51, of Canton was arrested by Dover police as he walked toward McDonald’s Restaurant on Davis St. about 3:50 p.m. Class was arrested on a warrant from Perry Township police at Massillon. The warrant, according to police in Dover and New Philadelphia, was for failure to appear. Dover police were assisted at the scene by three New Philadelphia officers. A Dover officer said...