A LaPorte County deputy was shot three times inside Franciscan Health Michigan City on Friday morning after stopping to help a stranded motorist, and Indiana State Police said the case ended with a 22-year-old suspect in custody and no further threat to the public.
Authorities identified the deputy as Jon Samuelson, 33, a K9 handler with the LaPorte County Sheriff’s Office who was taken to Memorial Hospital in South Bend in critical condition. The suspect was identified as Sharod Grafton Jr. of Chicago, who was arrested and booked at the Porter County Jail after officers found him in a wooded area west of the hospital.
The shooting began around 6:45 a.m. CT near State Road 2 and County Road 900 West near Westville, where Samuelson stopped to help a stranded motorist. Police said the motorist was Grafton, who asked for a ride to the hospital. Once inside the emergency department, Samuelson learned Grafton may have been involved in an earlier criminal incident in Illinois, and an altercation followed. Police said Grafton then shot Samuelson before running out of the hospital, crossing the parking lot and heading into the trees west of the building.
Responding officers took Grafton into custody and recovered a handgun they believed belonged to him and was used in the shooting. No other staff members or visitors were injured, and Grafton was not injured.
The incident was first treated as an active shooter situation before police later said it was isolated. Franciscan Health said the emergency department remained on ambulance bypass while walk-in patients were still being accepted through the main entrance. Franciscan Physician Network medical offices on site were closed, but all other services and departments stayed open as normal.
The shooting cut close to a family already tied to law enforcement and the hospital. Samuelson has been with the sheriff’s office for 12 years, his grandfather was a former chief of police for LaPorte, and his father once served with the Michigan City Police Department and now works security at the hospital.
Ronald C. Heeg, the LaPorte County sheriff, called on residents to rally behind Samuelson and his family, saying the community should rise up and support one of its own in prayer and strength. Franciscan Health said there was no active threat to patients, staff or the community, and state police said there was no immediate danger to the public as they led the investigation.
The questions now are narrower and more serious: what prompted the earlier Illinois incident police referenced, and why a man who was asking for help inside a hospital turned the encounter into a shooting. For Samuelson, the answer is already painfully clear. A routine act of service ended with a deputy fighting for his life, and the man accused of pulling the trigger is in jail.
