Who was Ralph Ennis? Local friends mourn the loss of ‘an easy-going, sweet guy’

After reading the second Warren County Sheriff’s Office (WCSO) press release on the early morning, April 2nd traffic stop, physical seizure, and subsequent death of 77-year-old Ralph Ennis, Royal Examiner contacted Main Street Pawn proprietor Ralph Waller and his wife, Sue. It was the Waller pawn shop at which Ennis was located in downtown Front Royal on March 11 following an endangered, missing person report issued by Pennsylvania State Police was received by local law enforcement concerning Ennis. That release further indicated that involved Sheriff’s Office personnel “spoke with a local businessman who graciously offered to let Mr. Ennis stay at his shop until family arrived to assume care for him.”

Putting two and two together, we guessed that local businessman might be Waller. Ralph Waller and his wife Sue confirmed that it was them with whom Ennis was left on March 11 and that they personally knew Ennis prior to his recent contacts with local law enforcement.

As has been reported, including with accompanying FOIA-requested Front Royal Police Department body camera footage of Ennis’s violence-tinged taking into custody on April 2, Ennis died 13 days after his traffic violation stop by WCSO personnel after being in medical care at two hospitals and Blue Ridge Hospice in Winchester. Following his April 2nd taking into custody, Ennis was immediately transported to Warren Memorial Hospital (WMH) in Front Royal, then transferred to Winchester Medical Center (WMC) with what had been determined at WMH to be “signs of a hemorrhage within his head.” According to the initial WCSO release the arrest or “criminal investigation” process stopped when Ennis was transported to the hospital for treatment of his injuries.

He died at Blue Ridge Hospice Winchester on April 15. Results of an autopsy conducted by the State Medical Lab have not yet been released. Jennifer Smith, the Administrator at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Manassas told Royal Examiner that results could take 12-16 weeks, though her office hopes to have results within 90 days.

As has been reported by Royal Examiner among other news outlets from D.C. to Harrisonburg, the Virginia State Police (VSP) are investigating the circumstances of Ennis’s physical seizure and subsequent death; and a Special Prosecutor, the Prince William County Commonwealth Attorney’s Office, has been appointed should charges be filed following the conclusion of the VSP investigation into the behavior of officers at the scene on April 2 and the cause of Ennis’s April 15th death.

‘He was just an easy-going, sweet guy’

But who was Ralph Ennis? That’s what Royal Examiner set out to discover in contacting the Wallers. Yes, it has been reported that he was considered an “endangered missing person” who should not be allowed to continue driving when located on March 11 due to possible cognitive issues “consistent with dementia or Alzheimer’s,” as reported in the WCSO releases on the circumstance of his being taken into custody April 2. Ennis drew the attention of multiple WCSO units for erratic driving and a failure to initially pull over during what has been described as a “low-speed” traffic pursuit at from 63 to 40 mph in 55 to 45 mph zones beginning at 1:16 a.m. April 2. But what is the rest of the story?

“I’ve known him for 20 years,” Ralph Waller told us. “He came in here to the pawn shop – he knew another pawn shop owner that I knew from up in Manassas. He came down here, and he’d tell me about his friend up there, Dale. And I said, ‘Well, I know him’ and we started talking – and he’s been coming here forever.”

“He was a bricklayer, a hard-working bricklayer at that time,” Sue Waller observed of the Ralph Ennis they met two decades ago. “He was just an easy-going, sweet guy. He would look at you and kind of grin, and he’d say, ‘Can I buy some lunch for you?’ and we’d say, ‘No, can we buy it for you’.”

“Sue would be trying to take the guns and the jewelry and put it away. And he’d always come and get the box for her, take it over and put it in the safe for her,” Ralph observed of Ennis’s tendency toward helpfulness.

Ralph Ennis, left, and Ralph Waller bide time at Main St. Pawn on March 11, as they awaited the arrival of Ennis’s son Ian, to safely get his dad home after an endangered missing person report was filed by Ennis’s wife Linda, out of Pennsylvania. Waller noted the ‘professionalism and helpfulness’ of sheriff’s office deputies on that occasion. Courtesy Photo the Wallers

The Wallers called Ennis “a social person who really liked people,” which led him into forays in Flea Market sales. In fact, a mutual friend, Bill Barnett, who stopped by the pawn shop while we were talking, told a story about when Ennis decided to get out of his flea market endeavor. Barnett said Ennis decided to sell his trailers with various goods they were loaded with, and he decided to buy one. “I went to pay him and he said, ‘No, you’re a friend – I’m trying to get rid of this stuff and you’re helping me out, there’s no charge for you’.”

“Well, he asked me – ‘Do you like birds?’ and I said, ‘Yea, I love to watch the birds,’” Sue chimed in of that period, adding, “He brought in a really nice book on birds, and I said, ‘No, you can sell this at your flea market, and he said, ‘No, I want you to have it. So, he gave this book to me that I have upstairs. But that’s just the kind of person he was.”

Over the years, Ennis also became a regular figure at Bible Study classes that gathered in a portion of the Wallers’ downtown East Main and Chester Street property. “He’d get here early and he’d say, ‘Give me the keys and I’ll open up the door, I’ll be back here’.”

“He loved it when people came in, especially Bible Study. Everyone knew him, and it was like setting your clock on Sunday. He didn’t want to miss it,” Sue said.

Ralph Waller explained that at one point, Ennis had lived in Stephens City in Frederick County. Eventually, his wife, Linda, moved to Pennsylvania to be closer to family there, they said. According to the Wallers, Ralph Ennis had a home built for his wife to relocate to in Pennsylvania, putting the home in her name.

But with most of his interests remaining further south, Ennis first stayed in Maryland for perhaps a year, the Wallers said. “So, he would drive down here from there, near Breezewood,” Ralph said. Eventually he relocated at least part-time here, staying for about a month at the Baymont Inn on Commerce Avenue at East Main Street in Front Royal, living with his two cats, of whom he was very fond, the Wallers noted. In fact, they said that the time of the April 2 traffic stop, Ennis had his two cats travelling with him.

We asked the Wallers about their friend’s recent cognitive issues, leading to the March 11 endangered missing person alert in which it was instructed that when found, Ennis should not be allowed to continue driving on his own. Ralph began with a nod to the involved sheriff’s office deputies on that occasion. “They were very professional; the four people involved were nice and very helpful.

They asked him where he was and he said, ‘I’m at the pawn shop’ and they said, ‘Well, what town are you in?’ and he had a little trouble, he said, ‘I’m here, at the pawn shop’.

“His wife had called in the report and told them he shouldn’t be driving,” Ralph noted. “His son came up here on March 11th with the Senior Alert,” Sue noted of Ennis’s son Ian, who had visited them at the pawn shop earlier the day we spoke to them. Ralph noted that, “The deputy told me, ‘Don’t let him drive,’ and I said, ‘I promise you he won’t drive; I’ll give the keys to his son.”

Not being doctors, the Wallers expressed mixed feelings about their friend’s cognitive diagnosis as to an onset of dementia or Alzheimer’s versus possible mini-strokes impacting specific memory areas. “When we were in the hospital (with Ennis), he remembered the preacher’s mother – and that was four months before, when she was in Florida. He said to him, ‘Oh yea, did your mom ever get back?’ – How do you remember that if you’ve got dementia?” Ralph asked of Ennis’s ability to recall specifics from lone conversations several months earlier.

Sue recalled, “Our preacher, he (Ennis) had been up to his house one time, and he remembered how to get up there. He just went up there to visit and our preacher was mowing his grass and his lawnmower wasn’t very good and he said, ‘Well, I’m going to have to get a lawnmower,’ and (Ennis) didn’t say anything. But the next day, he came down from Pennsylvania – he went all the way to Pennsylvania and came back down with a lawnmower and gave it to him. That’s the way he was. He was very kind-hearted and soft-spoken,” Sue trailed off at the memory.

At this point, we broached the topic of the early morning April 2nd traffic stop and their friend’s death 13 days later after being in continued hospital or hospice care in the wake of the circumstance of that encounter with county law enforcement. Had they seen the FOIA-released Front Royal Police bodycam of the arrest, and if so what was their perception of what they saw?

“Have I seen it? Absolutely, I’ve seen it a hundred times,” Ralph replied.

“Yes, it made me cry,” Sue said softly.

Ralph and Sue Waller reflected on the loss of their friend Ralph Ennis in their Main St. Pawn Shop on May 7, just three weeks after his death. Royal Examiner Photo Roger Bianchini

Of his reaction to what he’d seen, Ralph said, “I was looking at it, and I was trying to figure out why they brought the dogs out. It looks like they could have just walked up and handled the deal. It’s sad from all standpoints,” Ralph said, pointing to possible youth and inexperience contributing to deputies’ actions in the early-morning traffic stop around 1:30 a.m. at the Crooked Run Plaza 7/11.

“You can’t categorize the whole group from that,” Ralph added of overgeneralizing departmental behavior, pointing to the above referenced “professionalism and helpfulness” the Wallers and Ennis encountered from WCSO deputies on March 11. “That was in the daytime; this happened at night,” he observed of varying circumstances between the two law enforcement encounters.

“But look, somebody’s got to take charge of the situation. And it looks like to me there was nobody in charge there … I wonder who gave the order to tackle him,” Ralph said of the second phase of physical contact between deputies and Ennis that sent the two involved deputies to the ground on top of Ennis and left his back-of-head wound diagnosed at WMH as “signs of a hemorrhage within his head.”

“I’m telling you, I can see this scenario with these young guys out there – somebody gives them an order and they think ‘we’ve got to be aggressive’,” Ralph observed. But from this reporter’s few viewings of the FRPD bodycam footage, no clear audio of orders being issued were apparent leading to either physical confrontation with Ennis, the first leading to Ennis’s face being slammed with an audible thud into his 2016 Ford pickup truck, leaving his face bloodied, as he is being cuffed.

“They’re out there trying to do their job – they don’t know who it is,” Sue offered of the southbound Route 522/340 late night low-speed chase of someone not immediately responding to the pull-over notice of flashing lights behind them. – “But once they saw him, it looks like they could have,” again she trailed off, perhaps silently reflecting, “handled it differently.”

Body camera footage details circumstances of Ralph Ennis’s April 2 traffic stop