These docile ducks were fed for years by Towpath Trail hikers. Someone shot them

Angela Brown began walking on the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail in May 2020 as something to do at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

She soon got to know two white American Pekin ducks, which she nicknamed “Mr. Opaque” and “Friend,” that lived along the trail.

More than two years later, Brown was walking on the Towpath one afternoon and came across one of the ducks dead with some kind of shot wound in its neck. The other was nearby, clearly injured. The injured duck eventually had to be euthanized.

Brown wants to know who shot the ducks with what is believed to be a BB gun.

“Everybody loved these ducks, not just me,” said Brown, who lives in Cuyahoga Falls.

The ducks lived in the stretch of the Towpath between Wilbeth and Manchester roads, in Akron’s Firestone Park neighborhood and Coventry Township. Brown said she and others had been feeding the ducks for years.

Brown said she normally walks in the evening, but on July 11, she went for her walk around 1 or 1:30 p.m.

She came across the dead duck on the trail, with “a hole in its neck,” just past the state Route 224 bridge, and saw the injured duck nearby.

“Something made me turn around, and I saw its mate across the canal under the bridge, and I couldn't get to it, and I called its name, and it got up and then just collapsed, so I knew it was injured,” she said.

Brown called the Akron Police Department, which connected her with Summit Metro Parks and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Wildlife.

While Brown was waiting, Coventry Township residents Heather Bishop and her son rode up on their bikes. They’d ridden through the area around 11:30 a.m. that day and hadn’t seen anything, so they knew the shootings had been recent.

“I still just can't believe that someone would do that, especially with those ducks having been there for ages,” said Bishop, who said she’s seen the ducks for at least three years. “With it being on the Towpath, and there's other animals and people and everything, that's just dangerous.”

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Summit Metro Parks spokeswoman Stephanie Walton said in a statement that the agency’s ranger department received a call July 11 from a member of the public who reported two injured American Pekin ducks near the Towpath Trail and Ley Drive.

Walton said when rangers arrived, they found one duck dead along the Towpath and one injured nearby, possibly by BB pellet(s).

The injured duck was captured and taken to a veterinarian, but it was “in very poor condition when it arrived and was humanely euthanized," Walton said.

Walton said that no suspects have been identified. She also said that it’s unclear if the incident took place on Metro Parks-managed property and that there have been no reports of any similar incidents.

Brown said she and others who got to know the ducks on the trail over the years are devastated. She said after she got COVID-19 in August 2021 and almost died, the ducks became even more special to her.

Her daughter, a respiratory therapist, encouraged her to get back to walking on the Towpath, even though she was still on oxygen.

“I was pulling an oxygen tank behind me,” she said. “Those ducks were like therapy for me … Going on that trail and seeing those ducks, how happy and quacking, I’d call their name, ‘Mr. Opaque and Friend,’ and they’d come swimming over and just quacking away, and it made my day. And I see now it made other people's days, and I wasn't the only one that fed them.”

Brown has placed a sign on the trail with photos of the ducks and asking for anyone with information to call the Summit Metro Parks rangers. The sign asks in capital letters, “Who is responsible for killing these innocent ducks??” with two photos of the ducks and the message “In loving memory.”

“I haven't been (to that section of the Towpath) in two weeks because I'm still devastated. But I know I got to get back. It's just not gonna be the same, that trail without those two ducks,” she said. “I want people to be aware that somebody's doing this.”

Anyone with information can call Summit Metro Parks’ ranger department at 330-867-5511 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday or 330-475-0029 after hours.

Contact Beacon Journal reporter Emily Mills at emills@thebeaconjournal.com and on Twitter @EmilyMills818.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Two ducks apparently shot on Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail