Friday, April 13th, 1984.
That's the day my friend and Brother of the Badge, Richland County Sheriff's Deputy Ed Ernsberger, was shot by an escaped convict.
I was working at Ontario PD at the time, just a few months before I would leave to become a member of the Mansfield Police Department. I can't tell you what I was doing when I'd heard Ed had been shot, but I can tell you about what I did the next day.
I was part of a manhunt, along with two of my co-workers at Ontario PD, Ted Brinley and Mike Burchett.
Ed was the resident deputy up in Shiloh, as I recall, partnered with K9 Bear...a huge Rottweiler. Ed responded to a 'suspicious person' complaint, called in by a citizen due to an escaped prisoner from the Ohio State Reformatory earlier that week. Ed found the mope, not being sure if it was the escapee or not....turns out it was.
As Deputy Ernsberger patted the man, Mark Manley, down, the convict turned and began fighting with Ed. Manley gained control of the deputy's .357 magnum and shot him in the sternum, Ernsberger's bulletproof vest saving him from certain death. As Manley lined the downed officer up for a head shot, Bear exited the cruiser and charged Manley, causing his shot to miss.
Bear took three rounds in all; Ed took a second shot just above the arm hole in the side of his vest, which then glanced off his shoulder blade.
Knowing Manley had fired all six rounds from Ed's revolver, the wounded deputy attempted to re-enter his cruiser to get the shotgun from its rack. Manley jumped on the deputy inside the cruiser and began pistol-whipping him, just as the shotgun rack lock released. The convict wrestled the shotgun away from Ed, who then had the presence of mind to put his cruiser in gear and roar away from the scene.
Mark Manley, who had been incarcerated for felonious assault on a police officer, escaped the area with Ed's 12 gauge.
Ed survived his wounds; miraculously, so did Bear the Rottweiler; she carried those three slugs until she died several years later.
As you'd imagine, a massive manhunt ensued, with officers from every agency in Richland county, and some from neighboring counties as well as state agencies, taking part. Helicopters and aircraft, both police and civilian, took part in the hunt for Manley.
Back to Brinley, Burchett and I.
We'd been searching a woodline somewhere in the boonies for most of the day; the passage of time has robbed me of exactly where we were. As the three of us were walking through a field toward where we'd parked the cruisers, we noticed a truck from WBNS-TV out of Columbus parked nearby, a man with a camera on his shoulder filming the area. At one point I made some kind of remark to Ted, who was walking beside me, and he playfully smacked me in the back of the head as we all three laughed.
Of course, that clip made the six-o'clock news.
Manley was found a week and a half later by a teenager walking in the woods, the would-be cop killer dead of a self-inflicted shotgun blast, Ed's shotgun laying beside him.
A fitting end.
My friend Ed is still around, and we keep in touch through social media; we really need to get coffee one day and catch up face-to-face.
Mikey B, as I've called him for decades, is retired and living on a farm in rural Ashland county,a survivor of cancer that nearly took him from us. He's also an accomplished musician, playing stand-up bass fiddle in a bluegrass band.
Ted Brinley, one of the funniest guys I've ever known, died the following year from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident; I was honored to have been one of his pallbearers. I woke this morning thinking about Ted and that afternoon walking through the field with my friends
This past week's manhunt for fugitive Shawn Christy, which dominated the news for several days, ended on a good note, as he was apprehended without incident near Camp Mowana off US 42. Christy had been wanted for threatening to kill the President and a prosecutor in Pennsylvania. He'll now face justice for his threats.
I'm quite sure the Christy manhunt sparked the dream of that past manhunt so many decades ago, and the memories of Ed, Bear, Mikey B and Ted.
...and that dang video clip playing on the evening news.
You can read Ed's story here: https://www.ohiopolicek9memorial.com/k9-bear-richland-county.html
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| Ed Ernsberger and Bear |
