08/20/08 — The victim of a serious gunshot wound — and with the shooter still standing in front of her — Jessica Craig begged not for her own life but for his. Scott Knox was no longer aiming his gun at her or at Christopher Johnston behind her. He was aiming it at himself.
Early Saturday morning, Knox and another man apparently were in the midst of attempting to steal all-terrain vehicles from a barn not far from Craig’s Plank Road home in East Mead Township. The ATV noise had awakened Craig, and she approached Knox outside her home, police said.
According to police reports, he pulled a gun and shot Craig. The bullet struck her wrist then grazed her side, said Crawford County Coroner Patrick McHenry.
Johnston was following Craig to the scene, saw the shooting and fired back. The two men exchanged “multiple shots,” McHenry said. Johnston was using a .410 revolver, a pistol-like weapon that fires shotgun shells. That spelled real trouble for Knox. While his own pistol was missing his target, he was being sprayed by BB pellets.
Wounded, he finally jumped on one of the ATVs and sped off. But that departure was not made until he had tried to shoot himself in front of Craig and Johnston.
“The gun jammed,” said Crawford County Coroner Patrick McHenry, who did a thorough investigation of the incident. “It’s all there in the 911 tapes. The girl was trying to get him to put his gun down. And he was saying, ‘tell her I love her’ (apparently referring Knox’s fiancé).”
Escaping the 6:30 shoot-out, Knox fled to his home a couple of miles away, state police reports said. At about 7 a.m., he walked into a field across Schenberg Road from his house and took his own life.
“He got the weapon unjammed and used the same gun,” McHenry said. Though Knox’s wounds from Johnston’s gun would not prove fatal, he was certainly in a lot or distress, McHenry concludes — his body had been struck by 47 of the BBs, including one pellet imbedded above and one below one of his eyes.
Besides suffering from those wounds, Knox knew he would be in serious legal trouble, McHenry added. “He had been in jail before and apparently was not ready to return.”
Knox’s autopsy was especially critical evidence for McHenry’s report. “We had to make sure the cause of death was self-inflicted (and not because of any of the BBs),” McHenry said. “If it was ruled justifiable homicide (because Johnston’s shots were deadly), the district attorney would have had to make that ruling,” and that would have required Johnston to be the subject of a continuing investigation.
Saturday’s examination of the crime was unusual and quite complicated both for the police and for McHenry. It took more than 10 hours to complete work at the scene — a sweeping, rural setting 10 miles east of Meadville. “The crime scene goes on for miles and involves several kinds of crimes and myriad things out there,” McHenry said in praise of the local police effort. Leading the investigation was Meadville barracks PSP Trooper Kurt Sitler, who “did a fantastic job of pulling it all together,” McHenry said.
Craig was admitted to Hamot Hospital in Erie, where she was listed in fair condition on Saturday night. But she was subsequently released, a Hamot supervisor said Monday, saying only that Craig was no longer a patient there. Johnston faces no charges.
Accused of being an accomplice in Knox’s attempt to steal ATVs, Jonathan Myers of Perry Highway, Meadville, remains in Crawford County Jail, where he was placed Saturday evening in lieu of $100,000 bond. McHenry said Myers told police that he did not know Knox had a gun.
Craig, Johnston and Myers were not available for comment.
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