KIRKERSVILLE, Ohio – The Latest on the fatal shootings of an Ohio police chief and two nursing home employees (all times local):
4:30 p.m.
A sheriff says a gunman who killed an Ohio police chief and two female nursing home employees took two random people as hostages shortly before the shootings.
Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp says the gunman took two passers-by hostage behind the nursing home in a wooded area Friday.
Thorp says it was in that area that Kirkersville Police Chief Steven Eric Disario was killed while responding to reports of a man with a gun.
Thorp says investigators don't know if Disario fired his weapon. The sheriff says the hostages escaped when a shot was fired at the chief.
Thorp says Pine Kirk Care Center is a secure facility and investigators don't know how the gunman got in.
Kirkersville is about 25 miles (39 kilometers) east of Columbus.
___
4 p.m.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich (KAY'-sihk) has ordered flags flown at half-staff following the fatal shooting of a village police chief in an attack that also killed two nursing home employees.
Authorities say the gunman also was found dead Friday.
Kasich ordered flags flown at half-staff at the Statehouse and at all public buildings and grounds throughout Licking County in central Ohio, where the shootings happened.
The order lasts through sunset Tuesday.
The Republican governor says the gesture honors those who lost their lives in "senseless acts of violence" in Kirkersville, a village about 25 miles (39 kilometers) east of Columbus.
Investigators identified the slain Kirkersville police chief as 36-year-old Steven Eric Disario, who had been on the job for only three weeks and had six children, with a seventh on the way.
___
3:30 p.m.
A woman who works about a block from where an Ohio police chief and two nursing home employees were killed says she heard gunshots followed by screaming and then sirens.
Kathy Rogers owns a thrift shop on the same block as Pine Kirk Care Center.
Rogers said Friday she could hear a man yelling and screaming but wasn't sure what he was saying.
Rogers says she went across the street to a neighbor's home and hunkered down with a group of about nine adults and eight children.
Authorities say a gunman shot Kirkersville Police Chief Steven Eric Disario, who'd only been on the job for about three weeks.
Investigators say two nursing home employees were also shot and killed. The gunman was later found dead.
___
12:45 p.m.
Authorities say a gunman has fatally shot the police chief of an Ohio village and two nursing home employees.
Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp says the suspected gunman was also found dead Friday.
Thorp identified the slain police chief as 36-year-old Steven Eric Disario, who headed the Kirkersville Police Department. Thorp says Disario had only been on the job for three weeks.
Thorp says Disario was found outside the Pine Kirk Care Center. Thorp says two employees of the center and the suspected gunman were found dead inside the nursing home.
Thorp says Disario was a father of six children with a seventh child on the way.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox
