The two victims were longtime Indian River County employees, and police say the suspect was the estranged husband of one of them.
VERO BEACH, Fla. — The killing of two Indian River County employees outside the county’s main library on March 24 sent shock through a local government workforce already gathering for the day, as police said one victim’s estranged husband carried out a targeted shooting and then vanished.
For co-workers, the story was first about the dead. Danny Ooley, 56, had spent nearly 25 years in county public works and rose to assistant director. Stacie Mason, 49, had worked for the county since 2014 and served as a traffic analyst technician. Police later said Jesse Scott Ellis, 64, Mason’s estranged husband, was the suspect and secured murder warrants against him. But the immediate consequence in Vero Beach was not only a criminal case. It was a public institution suddenly forced to mourn two employees killed in a place tied closely to county business.
County leaders moved carefully after the shooting, waiting until families had been notified before publicly naming the victims. When they did, the statement stressed years of service and the weight of the loss. Ooley was described as someone who had risen through the ranks to a senior leadership post. Mason’s colleagues knew her through county traffic work and day-to-day operations that rarely draw public attention but shape how residents move through the community. Their deaths hit close to home because they happened near the courthouse and government offices, in the parking lot behind the Indian River County Main Library, where county workers and residents regularly pass. The killings were not tucked away in a private home or on a dark roadside. They happened in a civic space that normally signals routine, not violence, and that made the grief broader and more public from the start.
Police said that at 7:01 a.m. officers responded to reports of shots fired and found Mason and Ooley dead at the scene. Investigators later said the two were seated inside Ooley’s truck when gunfire erupted. Chief David Currey told reporters the case was a targeted marital issue tied to Mason’s breakup from Ellis and an apparent relationship between Mason and Ooley. Ellis and Mason had been married 13 years and were in the midst of separating or divorcing, police said. Ooley and Mason had been seeing each other for a short time, according to investigators. By presenting the case that way, police made clear they did not believe the public was facing a random shooter moving through town. Even so, the suspect’s disappearance after the shooting left the community with a different fear: not that the attack had been random, but that the man accused of carrying it out was still unaccounted for.
That concern deepened as the investigation traced Ellis from downtown to the shoreline. Police said he drove to South Beach Park after the shooting and entered the Atlantic before 8 a.m. Rescue crews later responded offshore and encountered a man who said he was a deep-water swimmer and wanted to be left alone. Investigators later concluded that man was likely Ellis. A witness image and later police-released stills suggested he made it back to shore and was seen walking south on the beach around 11:10 a.m. before his truck was found at 12:45 p.m. The beach episode turned what might have become a straightforward arrest search into a case built on fragments: a swimmer in distress, a man on the sand, a vehicle left behind and a suspect who seemed to slip between emergency response and criminal pursuit in the same morning.
As police searched the truck, the narrative sharpened. Officers said they found wet clothing, an empty holster, a .380-caliber magazine and personal effects including Ellis’ passport, wallet, license and credit cards. Currey said investigators also recovered writings from March that described deep emotional pain and suggested Ellis intended to harm himself and Mason. At the library scene, police said they collected 21 spent shell casings. By March 26, Ellis was wanted on two counts of premeditated first-degree murder. Those details gave investigators grounds to describe the case as planned rather than impulsive, but several major unknowns remained. Police had not publicly said whether Ellis left the beach area with outside help, whether he still had access to a firearm after the empty holster was found, or whether the ocean entry was meant as an actual suicide attempt or a diversion that bought him time.
The county response reflected both sorrow and the practical burden of moving ahead after a workplace loss. Officials said counseling and support services were offered to employees. County leaders described the deaths as profound, a word that fit the double role Ooley and Mason held in local life: they were private people caught in a personal crisis, but they were also public workers whose absence would be felt by colleagues, projects and departments. That dual identity shaped the case from the beginning. The victims’ names did not enter the news only as entries in a homicide report. They arrived with job titles, years of service and institutional memory. In that sense, the community was not just reacting to violence. It was reckoning with the removal of two known figures from the machinery of county government.
Where the case stands now is stark. Ellis has been publicly named, charged by warrant and searched for, yet not presented in court. The next visible step is either his arrest, a confirmed death or a fuller police accounting of what happened between the shooting shortly after 7 a.m. and the time his truck was recovered early that afternoon. Until then, the story remains suspended between a workplace memorial and an unfinished murder case.
Author note: Last updated April 17, 2026.