Stanford mayor killed in mowing accident
Stanford Mayor Scottie Ernst was killed Tuesday morning in a mowing accident in the city, Lincoln County Coroner Marcum Farris said.
“The mayor was mowing city property when the mower slipped over the edge of a creek bank and rolled down the embankment,” said Farris. “He was asphyxiated.”
Asked if the mayor regularly did mowing duties for the city, Farris said, “Oh, yes. He never was afraid to get his hands dirty, helping out where he could.”
The accident occurred off Martin Luther King Boulevard near the site where a replica of Fort Logan is being built. The city, one of the oldest in Kentucky, was founded in 1775 by Benjamin Logan.
Ernst was elected mayor of the city of about 4,000 people in 2018. He had been a city council member for 14 years.
His social media pages said he graduated in 1977 from Lincoln County High School and Mid-America College of Funeral Services in 1981.
“City council, employees, departments and boards are overwhelmed with grief and shock,” the city said. “We will never forget what you did for this city and how you made others feel,” the note posted on the Facebook page said of Ernst.
“Such a great loss to the Lincoln County community,” Jerry Zwahlen wrote on Facebook. “Scottie was always supporting local History projects.”
“This is awful; Stanford lost a real advocate,” Jo Ann Baer Wingfield said.
Services had not been set as of late Wednesday afternoon.
This story was originally published July 14, 2020 at 5:51 PM.
