Four people - a police chief, a nurse, a nurse's aide and the man who killed all of them - are dead following a shooting Friday morning at a nursing home in Kirkersville, Ohio, east of Columbus.
Authorities say the gunman had taken two passers-by as hostages in a wooded area behind the Pine Kirk Care Center.
The slain police chief, Steven Eric Disario, had headed the Kirkersville Police Department for only about three weeks, Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp said. The suspected shooter was also found dead.
Long said Hartless drove through the bushes up to the porch, and that Medrano was only a step ahead when she and her daughter pulled her into their house to safety.
An investigation continues into the fatal shooting of an OH police chief and two employees of a nursing home.
After that, he charged into the nursing home and opened fire.
When a shot was sacked at the chief, the hostages escaped unharmed.
He was responding around 7:50 a.m.to a report of a gunman in the street near Pine Kirk Care Center when he was killed.
Research has shown that 53 percent fewer law enforcement officers are fatally shot in the line of duty in states that require background checks on all handgun sales - which OH does not, according to Moms Demands Action for Gun Sense in America.
Disario, who had been the Kirkersville police chief only a few weeks when he was killed, has six children and another on the way. His wife was expecting their seventh child.
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Disario reported in his final communication that the suspect was in his sights.
Of note, Hartless had also been implicated in a case of domestic violence and had been granted early recently release from jail. She lived on the same street as he did in the nearby village of Utica.
Connie Long lives across the street from Hartless' parents' home, where he often stayed in Utica. "I guess the only peace of mind is that the threat is over". Some residents had barricaded themselves in various places, he said.
"We've always seen Licking County as a very safe community", Thorp said. "It was in that vicinity, very close to that, that the chief of police was in fact shot and was killed".
A witness told WCMH that he heard gunshots and saw people fleeing from the building.
"It's unacceptable that another member of OH law enforcement has been killed in the line of duty, along with two other souls who were doing nothing wrong", said Maureen Washock, volunteer OH chapter leader of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
"They cater to the forgotten members of society - folks that have, in addition to physical health care needs, behavioral health issues", Peter Van Runkle, executive director of the Ohio Health Care Association, a nursing home industry group, told the newspaper.
Kirkersville, about 24 miles east of Columbus, is a small village with a population estimated to be under 600 in 2015.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich sent his condolences to the officer's loved ones.
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