By BOB SHRALUKA
WZBD.com
For many Decatur and area residents, it was one of those moments that you long remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard what happened.
And 25 years later, when you learn of the anniversary, you say to yourself, “Has it really been that long?”
It was 25 years ago Wednesday that young state trooper Cory Elson lost his life in Decatur … after making a traffic stop for, as we recall, a non-working tail light on a pickup truck.
Relatives knocking at the door on a Saturday night a little after 8 had explained how they had been at Walmart (it’s first location in Decatur) on 13th St. and a helicopter was landing in the parking lot.
As editor of the Decatur newspaper, we made a few phone calls and learned that a state trooper had been fatally shot in the Advanced Auto Parts lot on 13th St.
The next day, Sunday, brought controlled chaos.
The suspect, Mark L. Lichtenberger, 38 at the time, lived in a scruffy trailer east of Decatur, on County Road 600N, not far from the Ohio line. His parents weren’t far away; their home was on the Indiana side of the state line, a short distance south of US 224.
The two homes were at the center of a manhunt which brought out numerous police officers, their vehicles and, as we remember, a helicopter.
Before long, Lichtenberger was in custody. One report said that on Sunday he had gone to a home on CR 600N to complete some work he had been doing there, and that’s where he was taken into custody.
Found guilty of murder and other charges in July of 2000, Lichtenberger is living out his life in the prison at Michigan City. Parole is not an option.
Cory Elson was just 26 years old and had been on the state police force, out of the Fort Wayne post, not quite four months when he was gunned down. He left behind a wife, Amy.
He had thrown the red light on Lichtenberger over for a traffic violation. As they pulled into the parking lot, Elson got out of his vehicle and Lichtenberger began firing. He was reported to have fired off 36 rounds from an AK-47. Elson was shot in the leg, then returned fire before being fatally hit.
It has been said then and since that Lichtenberger had told people he was tired of being pulled over by police and next time was going to get his revenge.
Former Decatur police chief Lennie Corral remembers the night.
Keebie Meyer, a detective with the city police department, was going for ice cream with his son, Scott, when he heard gunshots, Corral said. As Meyer drove into the Advanced Auto Parts parking lot, his unmarked car was shot at, so Meyer – who now resides in Milwaukee – told his son to get down and backed up onto 12th St., then called the station.
“I was at home when we got the notice to meet at the station; bring your vest and your gun,” Corral – a third-shift patrolman at the time – said Thursday. “No one knew who were we looking for but we were told to be on the lookout for a green pickup. So we all drove around in our own cars for something like four hours before we were called off. The state police were taking over.”
Dick Noack was police chief at the time.
An Advanced Auto Parts employee, Vernon Clark, was working that night and ended up being shot, getting caught in the cross fire. He said he went outside after seeing a vehicle pull into the parking lot, followed by a state police cruiser.
“The emotion went from curiosity to extreme panic in the blink of an eye,” Clark told a Fort Wayne TV station years later. “I’ve been around gun safety enough to know when you’re on the wrong side of a muzzle flash, you’re in the wrong place . So as I looked around the corner of the building, and I see all these muzzle flashes, I know I’m down range and I’m in a bad place so I just turned around and had to get out of there.”
Clark was so shaken by what happened that night that after he was released from the hospital for the wound he received, he and his wife decided going home was a bad idea.
“We went to a hotel and stayed the night there,” Clark said. “The next day, we went to Fort Wayne just because we didn’t want to be at home. We didn’t know if the guy was still on the loose, if he knew who I was, knew there was a witness that maybe he wanted to get rid of, so we just hid out in plain sight.”
The shock of Trooper Elson’s death was compounded by the fact that Trooper Richard T. Gaston, who had been Elson’s roommate at the State Police Academy, had been killed in the line of duty the previous month.