Officer Attacked with Hammer

An East Ridge police officer is expected to be fine after answering a disturbance call and being attacked by a man wielding a hammer.

Assistant Police Chief Stan Allen said police were called to the 6700 block of Ringgold Road, Saturday afternoon, on a disturbance. The complainant said a man was yelling and waiving a hammer at customers in front of a business.

Chief Allen said that when an officer arrived the man who was creating the disturbance was gone. However, the man was located a short time later on Frawley Road.

“When the officer got out he was attacked with a hammer,” Chief Allen said. “The officer was hit in the arm.”

Taylor Mackinnon

Chief Allen said both the officer, who is not being named at this time, and the suspect, identified as Taylor Mackinnon, 37, of a Frawley Road address, were taken to a local hospital.

According to Police Chief J.R. Reed, the officer was not seriously injured in the attack and is okay.

Officials said Mackinnon was booked on two counts of Aggravated Assault and is being held in the Hamilton County Jail on a $5,000 bond.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.