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Deputies involved in weekend shooting put on paid leave

Provided Robert Piercefield Jr.

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By Eric Schwartzberg, Staff Reporter Updated 8:54 PM Monday, November 9, 2009

DEERFIELD TWP. — Warren County Sheriff’s Office deputies responding to a weekend shooting found themselves greeted with gunfire that only ceased when the assailant took his own life.

Robert Piercefield Jr., 56, killed himself after opening fire at sheriff’s deputies called to investigate a domestic violence report Saturday, Nov. 7.

The incident occurred in the 4500 block of South Shore Drive in the Water’s Edge subdivision just north of Socialville-Fosters Road.

911 calls made around 6:16 p.m. indicate Piercefield’s wife had seen her husband loading the weapon, a Soviet-era semi-automatic pistol. She then yelled to Sgt. Doug Wheatley and Deputy Nick Marconi that Piercefield had a gun.

That’s when Piercefield stepped out of his garage and confronted Wheatley, telling the deputy to leave and firing a bullet, which flattened the front right tire of Wheatley’s vehicle, according to Warren County Sheriff Larry Sims.

Arriving on the scene moments later, Deputy Mark Purdy found his colleagues ducking for cover and unable to draw their weapons. Purdy fired at Piercefield, striking his right shoulder with one bullet, which diagonally traveled through his body and lodged in the area near his left shoulder. The bullet damaged tissue but did not strike any vital organs, according to preliminary autopsy results from The Warren County Coroner’s Office.

Piercefield then shot himself in the head, apparently killing himself instantaneously, Sims said.

“He just stepped back under cover of the garage, put the gun up under his chin and fired,” he said.

One of the rounds that Piercefield fired traveled several hundred yards and through the wall of home on Harbor View, shattering a framed picture. The homeowner, who was home at the time, noticed the bullet on the floor of his living room after sitting down on glass from the picture frame.

Wheatley was treated for a minor hand injury suffered while diving for cover, but no other injuries were reported.

Marconi, Purdy and Wheatley are on paid administrative leave for as long as necessary and the sheriff’s office is arranging for counseling before they return to work, Sims said.

“There’s not much worse you can deal with on this job unless one of your own are the one’s who are injured,” he said.

Sims said Piercefield was estranged from his wife since September and had moved to Grove City, Ill., where he found a construction job. He was returning to Deerfield Twp. to live with his estranged wife again when an dispute over where he parked in the driveway escalated into an full-blown argument.

Deputies have been called to the residence six times in the past year including a domestic in progress call in December 2008 and a domestic complaint on Nov. 5.

The last time a Warren County sheriff’s deputy was fired upon was Dec. 31, 2006, when a man holed up in a residence fired high-powered rifles and led police in a high speed chase down Interstate 71 before being captured.

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