Sad Mother’s Day for family of slain Ohio nurse’s aide

KIRKERSVILLE, Ohio >> The family of a 48-year-old mom of five children is in mourning this Mother’s Day weekend, after her slaying at the Ohio nursing home where she was a nurse’s aide.

The Columbus Dispatch reports that Cindy Krantz is being remembered as a kind person who loved her kids. She, nurse Marlina Medrano, 46, and Kirkersville Police Chief Steven Eric DiSario, 36, were killed in the Friday attack.

Suspect Thomas Hartless, 43, was found dead inside the nursing home in Kirkersville, a village of some 500 residents, about 25 miles east of Columbus.

Authorities said Sunday they didn’t immediately have any new information to release. They have said they are looking into the relationship between Hartless and Medrano, who had obtained civil protection orders against him in connection with domestic violence cases.

In the nearby city of Pataskala, Krantz’s family said she liked to help others.

“One of the things that I fell in love with was she had a really big heart,” husband Chris Krantz said.

He said she would give neighborhood children ice cream and round them up to take them to Sunday school.

“She took care of me and loved me,” said her youngest son, Christopher, 10.

She was going to be a grandmother for the second time. Daughter Allison Burnett, 19, is pregnant.

“Hopefully, it’s a girl,” Burnett said. “And it will look like her.”

Disario headed the Kirkersville Police Department for only about three weeks, Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp said. He was the father of six children, with a seventh on the way, the sheriff said.

Hartless was released from jail in April after his latest domestic violence case in March. State prison records show he served eight months in 2010 for the 2009 abduction of another woman.

Medrano had said earlier this month she was afraid to be alone with him. Court records show Medrano had reported injuries including a concussion and cuts requiring stitches.

Authorities say the gunman had taken two passers-by as hostages in a wooded area behind the Pine Kirk Care Center. Disario, responding to a report of a man with a gun, said in his last radio communication that he had the man in sight. The hostages escaped unharmed, as did all 23 residents of the nursing home.