By Police1 Staff
Springfield, Ohio — A shootout between officers and a suspect in an Ohio trailer park that claimed the life of Deputy Suzanne Hopper was captured on video by a local TV affiliate.
In the video below from WDTN Dayton, a brief, intense gunbattle is captured, during which German Township patrolman Jeremy Blum is struck in the arm while trying to retrieve Hopper’s body.
“He was itching to get her,” resident Angelina Inman told The Associated Press. “He kept radioing in, can he please get her, and he was told no because it wasn’t secure. You could see that male sheriff crying — he wanted to get her, he wanted to get her bad.”
The standoff started after Deputy Suzanne Hopper was called to the Enon Beach trailer park to investigate a report of gunshots, authorities say. Hopper, who was married last year and had two children, was shot dead as she tried to photograph a footprint at the park, about 50 miles west of Columbus.
Sheriff Gene Kelly told reporters at a Sunday news conference that Hopper and the officer who accompanied her to the trailer park believed the shooter was no longer in the area when they began their investigation. Then, Kelly said, Ferryman’s trailer door opened near Hopper.
“One shotgun blast was fired at a very close proximity, striking the deputy, and it was a fatal wound,” he said.
Kelly has said responding police officers tried to talk to Ferryman — who had “a history” with the sheriff’s office — when he fired on them from inside the trailer. A German Township officer was wounded in the ensuing gunbattle, in which “many, many, many” shots were fired by the suspect and eight officers, Kelly said.
The wounded officer, Blum, was listed in fair condition Sunday at a Dayton hospital.
Authorities had yet to determine whether police gunfire killed Ferryman or he killed himself.
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Additional reporting by The Associated Press