Talented high school baseball player followed dream

Maryland State Police Sgt. Rob Embly said he excelled in baseball as a student at South Hagerstown High School.

By the time he graduated in 1988, scouts from the Pittsburgh Pirates and Los Angeles Dodgers were talking to him, he said.

North Carolina State University offered him a scholarship, said Embly, 39.

He didn't accept that scholarship. He said he attended Hagerstown Community College on a baseball scholarship for a year, and then the Maryland State Police accepted him into its cadet program.

He graduated from the Maryland State Police Training Academy in 1991. His dream was to be a state trooper.

State police assigned Embly to work in Rockville for a year and the Frederick Barrack for eight months. Then he spent the next 13 years in Hagerstown.

Embly was assigned to the Frederick Barrack a few years ago. He was promoted to sergeant shortly after.

While the Beltway sniper was at large, Embly went to Montgomery County to work security at the elementary schools.

"On the day the sniper was caught, I was driving by the rest area as a SWAT team approached the suspect vehicle," Embly said.

His orders were to continue on to Montgomery County, but his brother-in-law, state police Cpl. Richard Poffenberger Jr., was one of the first troopers at the rest stop.

Poffenberger set up a perimeter until the FBI got there, Embly said.

Another memorable case Embly worked on was in the late 1990s. A man was threatening to kill his wife and daughter with a gun, Embly said. Embly spoke to the suspect on a cell phone and persuaded him to put the gun down and let both hostages go.

One of the more traumatic days in Embly's career came in December 2007. Smithsburg Police Officer Chris Nicholson was killed in a confrontation with Doug Pryor, who had just killed his ex-girlfriend, Embly said.

"We got in a shootout with Doug Pryor," Embly said. "He opened fired on us with a .22-caliber rifle."

Embly took cover behind a car struck by gunfire, but he and the other officers maintained the perimeter around Pryor, he said. Officers eventually took Pryor into custody.

Copyright 2009 The Frederick News-Post. All rights reserved.