Eric wasn’t wrong. After abducting and raping a woman at gunpoint, attempting to set fire to a house, and ramming three police cars in a flatbed truck, his rampage was finally brought to an end.
Eric Ramsey started his night of terror at 9:30 PM the previous evening, outside of the Student Activities Center in the middle of Central Michigan University’s Mt. Pleasant campus. He approached the woman, a senior from the Grand Rapids area, as she walked to her Ford Escape.
Ramsey brandished a gun, forcing her into the car, and directed her to his home that he shared with his mother. He then bound and raped her.
After the assault, police say Ramsey put the woman back in the car, along with two tanks of gasoline and began driving. When he told the woman he was going to kill her, she jumped from the car and ran to a nearby residence, where she knocked on the door and yelled for help.
A 14-year-old boy, his 11-year-old sister and 2-year-old brother were home alone, but the teenager let the woman in, locked the door and grabbed his hunting knife, before moving his family and their dog into the bathroom.
As the woman was calling police, Ramsey poured gasoline on the house and set it on fire before fleeing. Luckily, the teenager had also phoned his father who rushed home, putting out the fire.
It was around this time that Ramsey first took to Facebook.
“It’s been real, bro, wish I could have hung with you once last time. Love you, brother,” Ramsey allegedly posted to a friend’s Facebook page as events were still unfolding.
At around 2:50 AM troopers were investigating a suspicious vehicle in a parking lot in a nearby town when the driver rammed the patrol car three times, rendering it inoperable.
Responding troopers followed the vehicle’s tracks in the snow to an elk ranch further up the road. The tracks led them through an elk enclosure fence at least 8 feet high, where the troopers, now on foot, followed the evidence for about a mile before finding the vehicle stuck in the snow.
The troopers followed footprints in the snow that led away from the abandoned vehicle to a sanitation company. The footprints continued to fresh vehicle tracks, where a dual-wheeled truck had clearly once been parked.
Less than an hour later, Ramsey had clearly resigned himself to his fate, and posted his final message on Facebook. He turned off the headlights of the stolen truck and headed along the road toward troopers who were looking for tracks, striking their car from behind, putting it out of action.
A Crawford County deputy was following the truck and witnessed the crash. After checking on the troopers’ condition, the deputy saw the truck turn around and begin heading right for him.
The deputy attempted to turn off the road to avoid being rammed as well, but Ramsey followed the deputy’s escape route and crashed into him, wedging both vehicles together.
After briefly being pinned in his vehicle, the deputy struggled out of his car and fatally shot Ramsey as he sat in the cab of the truck.
‘I’ve been in this community for 35 years,’ Central Michigan University Police Chief Bill Yeagley told reporters. ‘I don’t remember anything like this.’
