Whitehall police suspect that Bela Mozer already had killed before he opened fire on Officers Terry McDowell and Eric Brill on Friday evening.
The .357-caliber Magnum revolver Mozer used to kill McDowell and injure Brill had been stolen from Joseph E. Buker. Officers found Buker shot to death in February on the other side of the duplex where Mozer lived, Whitehall Police Chief James Stacy said.
Detectives interviewed Mozer and his wife, Anna, as potential witnesses to the slaying but never considered them suspects, Stacy said.
"Our detectives did find it odd that they didn't hear anything, and this was an adjoining unit,'' Stacy said. Whitehall and Columbus detectives planned to search Mozer's home again last night for evidence in the Buker slaying.
Still, he said, McDowell and Brill had no reason to think that they were facing an armed killer as they approached the Mozers' home at 142 Beechbank Rd. on Friday evening.
They were there as a result of a chain of events that started, as had many of Mozer's run-ins with police, with a bout of drinking.
At about 4:45 that afternoon, police say, they arrested Mozer on E. Broad Street for drunken driving and fleeing the scene of an accident. Mozer had struck another car and continued weaving down the road.
At the police station, Mozer refused to take a Breathalyzer test for alcohol. Police booked him, and he called his wife to take him home. When Anna Mozer arrived at the station on Yearling Road shortly before 6 p.m., officers told her she and her husband should walk home because she had no valid license.
They set off walking the few blocks home, but Anna Mozer circled back a few minutes later to get the car. As she drove off, an officer wrote out a ticket for driving without a license. McDowell and Brill took the assignment to deliver the ticket to Anna Mozer.
At 6:45, McDowell and Brill approached the Mozers' front door.
McDowell, a member of Whitehall's SWAT team with more than 14 years of police experience, knocked.
Mozer fired the Magnum through the screen door, hitting McDowell in the chest just above his body armor, throwing the officer to the ground. Mozer quickly swung the door open and shot Brill through the left eye.
As Brill staggered toward the street to escape, police say, Mozer stepped out of the house, stood over McDowell and executed him, firing at point-blank range into the officer's forehead.
"Neither of these officers was able to draw a weapon or return fire,'' Stacy said. "They walk up, and it's just boom, boom.''
Even with a bullet lodged in his head, Brill, a former wrestler at Bishop Hartley High School, made it to the street and called for backup.
"In all probability,'' Stacy said, "had he fallen, he, too, would have been executed.''
Brill was in serious condition at Grant Medical Center last night with a bullet in his sinus cavity, said Lt. Richard Zitzke, spokesman for the Whitehall Police Department. He likely will lose his left eye, but the bullet did not reach his brain.
After he shot McDowell and Brill, Mozer casually walked back inside the house and then into the back yard, where he sat down in a lawn chair and waited. He still held the Magnum.
As neighbors tried to understand what was happening, officers swarmed to the scene. As they shouted at him to drop the gun and lie on the ground, Mozer took aim and fired. Officers returned fire, striking Mozer in the thigh. But Mozer killed himself, Coronor Brad Lewis said yesterday, placing the Magnum to his head and pulling the trigger.
Police said Anna Mozer was in the house during the shooting. She came out after her husband shot himself to look at his body, and then went back inside. Police escorted her from the house in handcuffs but she was later released.
No one knows why Mozer snapped.
People who knew him said yesterday that Mozer drank too much, was often depressed and did not like the Whitehall police, who had arrested him several times.
"I think he was kind of schizophrenic lately -- he thought everybody was following him,'' said George Payer, who knew Mozer through the Hungarian Reformed Church on Walcott Road, where the Mozers sometimes attended.
Mozer had been on disability since 1998 when he was struck by a car on I-70 while he was trying to retrieve a hubcap, Payer said. A former minister at the church, Istvan Nyeste, said the couple survived on the disability payments and Anna Mozer's job as a hotel maid.
"They had a lot of problems,'' said Nyeste, who said he tried to help the Mozers for a while.
"They had financial problems and emotional problems,'' Nyeste said. "They had drinking problems, both him and his wife.''
Before the car accident, Nyeste said, Mozer had a hard time keeping a job.
"He occasionally was drinking, and he would lose his jobs,'' Nyeste said. "Then he was sober for a while, and he would start drinking and would lose his job again. That put a financial burden on them.''
Neither Nyeste or Payer knew that Mozer owned a gun.
But police think he took the Magnum from Buker's half of the duplex at 140 Beechbank Rd. and that Mozer might have killed his neighbor before he took it.
Neighbors say Buker and Mozer worked on cars and drank together before Buker's slaying on Feb. 2. He was found the next day with a single gunshot to the head after he failed show up for work at a Kroger store at 3675 E. Broad St. Whitehall police never made an arrest in the slaying, and in April featured the killing in the Crime Stoppers program to seek clues.
Buker's family could not be reached for comment last night.
Mozer's run-ins with police included a 1997 incident in which Whitehall officers pursued him to his home, suspecting that he was driving drunk. Mozer refused to provide identification when police tried to arrest him, and he was charged with interfering with a criminal investigation. Anna Mozer was charged with resisting. They each pleaded guilty to a reduced disorderly conduct charge.
In November, police charged Mozer with domestic violence and assault. An officer charged that Mozer punched his wife in the face, but Whitehall prosecutors dropped the charges after she refused to testify against him.
He also paid a $10 ticket for allowing his dog to run loose in the neighborhood. In each case, he requested a Hungarian interpreter when he went to court.
"He tried to be street smart, but he was so slow,'' Payer said.
Mrs. Mozer was staying with other Hungarian friends yesterday, Payer said. "It's upset the whole (Hungarian) community,'' he said. "I feel so sorry for the officer and his children.''
Doug Caruso, Ray Crumbley and Mary Mogan Edwards
Dispatch Staff Reporters
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