Manhunt continues for Kentucky highway shooter

news radio 700 WLW Scott lone show here on 700 WLW on the heels of the Georgia school shooting last week uh the manhood continues for an armed and dangerous person interest in a shooting that happened on Saturday so around 5:30 I believe Saturday afternoon a gunman shot into cars driving on I75 a few miles north of London Kentucky that's about 150 miles roughly from Cincinnati certainly within our lisening area uh five people struck seven um I I think nine cars had I guess hit by bullets from this uh uh this long gun but five people struck no fatalities thank God there are some severe injuries and Dr Alex Del Carman is here he's from Charlton State University criminologist and terrorism expert jumping on the show this morning Dr Alex good morning thanks for having me yeah thanks for jumping in um this to me is one of those stories that should be a lot bigger than it is obviously what the tragedy in Georgia um is first and foremost when you have young people a 14-year-old who's given a gun by his dad and and it looked like the young man was Under Disability from some mental issues he still gave a gun that's that's sickening is what that is um but there's going to be some closure there you know what's going on this one to me is bigger because I I've driven in the past and I always wonder this because I I think of these things when I'm driving I look around the foothills of Kentucky the hills of Cincinnati the vast space here in the Midwest in Ohio where you drive once you're out of the city there's a lot of rural areas and there's a lot of traffic on those highways i' often thought like wow if you really wanted to terrorize people you could park your self in a tree line on a hill somewhere in rural Ohio Kentucky or Indiana and did what this guy allegedly did on Saturday and that is take pot shots at drivers causing the interstate to shut down 75's massive North South Highway arguably the biggest North South Highway in the country and bring everything to a screeching halt and and probably get away with it you you shoot at 6 seven n cars by the time they they respond you're long gone and maybe on to the next thing we saw the DC sniper at Harkin back to that but to me this is more diabolical and also vulnerable would you agree that's exactly right and and I agree with you that this should be a bigger story uh unfortunately I think by now many of us in our society have become in many ways used to these stories and so so you sort of turn on the TV or you listen to the radio and you hear you know one more shooting people getting shot and people are like well where that where do that happened and oh that's thousands of miles away okay let's let's talk about the national news now and so it's very sad but but it is a reality that we're all experiencing but I agree with you this is a this is a horrible incident and he has the potential don't forget this SC he has the potential for being a bigger story and a more catastrophic story right because we don't know the end of this we have no idea if this person is going to go to another state or perhaps has fled you know to another jurisdiction and he going to do the exact same thing and this time around there will be casualties in this case we know it's a Joseph a couch of woodb Kentucky close by to where the shooting was they found a AR-15 and a wooded area adjacent to I75 outside London Kentucky and so they have the gun uh I presumably it is the the weapon that he used in this case he left it behind they traced it to him he bought it the same day 2,000 rounds of ammo and we talk about you know gun gun laws and all that other stuff but fact the matter is there's nothing in his record that was significant that would prevented him from getting that gun in the first place I hear that and go wow if that's the case and we have we always worry about domestic terrorism and foreign terrorism and the like and we saw what happened and live through 911 we've seen other acts of terrorism around the world since then and how easy it is for someone to get a gun and do what this guy did except for the fact instead of leaving it this could turn into the DC sniper case because we've we've heard of CopyCat individuals and being inspired by sick stuff like this and and how easy it would be to get away with this I would say if he didn't leave the gun um how would you catch someone like that that's almost impossible isn't it it would have been very hard um you know we one of our biggest tools in the law enforcement profession has been the usage of the cell phone by bad guys right and so there would have been a possibility that we would have been able to Ping perhaps the presence of a cell phone in the area at that time and then come up with a list and then go down that list and figure out you know who the bad guy perhaps is but there's no question that finding a weapon and being able to trace it back to fingerprints or whatnot uh it's a much better uh and more specific type of of of of Trace that allows us to now have a face and an aim next to the suspect yeah um in the South but you're also on 75 and so how many hundreds of cars are passing by while they're there and now it's a that feels more like a needle and a hay stack it would have been but but but believe me when I tell you that these investigators and these detectives are really really good at what they do we had an incident like that here in Texas in Arlington Texas where an officer lost his life and we couldn't find out uh you know we didn't know for for many months rather uh who the person was that had actually killed him and ran into him and then what we found out afterwards is through sful technology we were able to deduct who the bad guy was and he was eventually apprehended so that does happen we have the capability of doing it but it's a very long and arious process yeah and you're driving right now probably listen to the Show and Dr Alex Del Caron is criminologist and terrorism expert talking about the Kentucky shooting that should get more play than it does I mean is making headlines to be sure but the significance of this is that man we have so many unguarded highways and just places to hide that it wouldn't take much effort to replicate this kind of crime and tragedy and have that repeat by by some lunatic with an agenda now this guy looks like it's a it's a one-off for him premeditated for sure it doesn't appear that the individuals in the cars are targeted I'm just trying to think normally we see all right I guess the 14-year-old had some issues with bullying at school what's scary about this is here's a guy with literally nothing of significance in his record going on a shooting spree against total strangers that really scares me yeah that we know of at this point right so we don't know what the triggers have been we have no idea there's a digital uh signature or fingerprint uh in his record that he left something behind that would could actually give us a sense of why he's doing what he's doing so far what we know is he served in the National Guard uh he was an engineer in the National Guard and he we also know that you know by virtue of that he knows how to use weapons and has been trained to kill right so so those those issues are challenges for law enforcement right now especially that the guy can blend in is from the area um and knows exactly where to go the fact that we found one weapon in doesn't mean that he can't have access to others right or that he may have other weapons in his possession so he's still very much a danger and a threat to everybody in the community yeah he was a person of interest and now he is a suspect um explain that nuance and the difference in what may have happened Al of that yeah it's basically you know we were able to trace his fingerprints to the weapon and therefore now he's no longer a person of interest that would like to talk to and sort of disqualify you know as somebody potentially that pulled the trigger now we have more specific information that legally allows us to call him you know a suspect which means that you know he is basically linked to the weapon of choice uh in this particular crime and we believe and we're treating him as somebody who is in fact you know the bad guy except that it has to be proven in the court of law yeah it doesn't seem like a plot a wellth thought out one if you leave the gun with your fingerprints on that you just bought that morning it it seems like something else was going on there yeah and I think that part of it also is what we do know however is we know that and law enforcement believed that he actually premeditated the the the attack not necessarily the people that he was going to Target right so in other words this is just basically somebody that says I'm going to go to the highway and I'm going to start shooting at people and those that were actually passing by are the Unfortunate Souls that were shot at but uh but the reality is at the end of the day what matters is that there are innocent people that have been shot at um you know possibly some of some of them could have died and we just don't know what we don't know about what he's going to do you know today or tomorrow the contrast with this though I think it's interesting is IMM you hear this you go wow it's the Beltway Sniper again and if you go back um 20 years Lee alvo I believe was the man's name and had an accomplice a younger man that he helped recruit but he's driving around DC and from a little um I don't know a little little hole in the back of his car that little flap he would lay down he'd lay down in the prone position and and fire shots in DC and we're talking about heavily populated areas unlike what we're talking about in rural Kentucky here but still that terrorism went on for a long time before he was finally apprehended this one has some parallels but also a lot of Distinction the differences right and then on top of that we've technology has advanced right in the past 20 years and so now we have cell phones we have satellite components we have you know uh license plate readers uh in the streets we have a much larger capability to be able to track somebody down I'm not saying that this person is going to be caught in the next 24 to 48 hours but what I am saying though is that I'm rather optimistic about the fact that I think it's not going to take us as long to to catch the bad guy in this case uh given the technology that we have so frightening too um Dr Del Carman that you're driving down the highway in 75 pretty mundane kind of Drive you're approaching or driving away from London Kentucky about 150 miles from Cincinnati all of a sudden um you know glass is shattering and there's loud noises and and my God I'm driving my car next thing know I'm bleeding and and wondering what the hell just happened here um that's wow that is so traumatic for anyone involved in this it's it's sickening it is and I think that that's exactly what he trying to do right more so than that then actually you know hurt people physically is the idea of psychologically imposing Terror uh the idea of ensuring that you know people when they drive down that Highway they either take alternative routes or they simply are you know saying saying a prayer as they drive down the road because they have no idea if they're going to be the next targeted entity and so look domestic terrorism is exactly how the world describes it right if somebody that the domestic front is trying to inflict a psychological Terror on everyone uh in the community so that all of us become you know keenly aware of this person's existence and we curtail our our Behavior based on what that person's threat we think it's going to be and how that's going to come up against us yeah and this coupled what just happened in Georgia late last week as well with the shooting there this happens on Saturday the shooting in London Kentucky outside of London Kentucky and uh we're in a political season we're always in the political season but it's hard and heavy now past Labor Day as a Sprint towards November continues and uh I would expect Democrats KLA Harris and Tim Walls to to make hay of these issues politically speaking uh and exploit them for political game as they they would often do politicians do that uh and the fact that this guy bought an AR-15 and 2,000 rounds of ammo the same morning people are screaming about gun laws and and getting rid of that H from your perspective how' that work it it's you know you're calling for something and I get that that um you know Democrats often look for a Utopia in a Land of the Second Amendment and and 300 plus million people seems awfully difficult to weed someone out and go well there's should be a waiting period even if you are perfectly sane and even still aren't you just going to do that shooting at a later point to Simply say well we we got a ban guns you're going to hear a lot of that uh out of this but what does that achieve it doesn't achieve anything well you know I I I stay away from Politics as best as I can and I can't blame people that do and I will tell you just looking at the science of it all right I'm a criminologist and I've been doing this for 27 years and I can tell you that the science is just not there right it's not supporting uh that particular political perspective in the sense that when you look at it from the standpoint of the millions of guns that are sold every single day uh and the usage of one it doesn't necessarily mean that curtailing the usage of guns itself is going to actually Pro promote you know a better type of or safer type of environment I argue that b guys are going to get a hold of weapons regardless of whether they can legally buy them or not the bottom line though is is that our society is becoming more violent and that people are doing things that in the past we only would would you know perhaps by the 1984 George Orwell book and say gee that could never happen in the United States well we're seeing now that things are happening at a worse level than we ever imagined and and you know we just don't know what we don't know about what the future holds what we do know however is that the pandemic uh and various other components that happened in recent history are attributors in many ways to what we conceive now to be the madness around us of the violence that is increasing across the world yeah I I push back a little on that one too because um and I'm not disagreeing with you on it's feels like you know there's more attacks and gun instances things like that but Society even 50 years ago certainly 100 years ago was a lot more violent as today I mean you look at what was legal um just a few years ago and you could physically assault your wife if you wanted to be a great example of you beat your kids and now we have laws that that rightly so have outlawed all that behavior but you know you go back to the good old days were they really that good in terms of violence because I mean lynchings were common not all that long ago and people would just get away with it that's an extremely violent Mur is what that is and those are just talked up to the to the times that we lived in yeah and I and I'll add something to that that that not hopefully will make you change your mind but for you to consider in that premise is the fact that that you know back then uh we also did not report crime the way we do now and and and often times you know what we have now is we have the technology the ability the acceptance socially that people you know if a wife is beaten up there are chances that she's going to pick up 911 or go online or go to somebody's you know home and say hey by the way you know you know my husband or my partner beat me up and and I need help whereas in the past that was not only not not accepted but he was not tolerated yes and that person was almost always uh you know in disbelief that you know that this would have actually happened to that person so I would argue that the laws have changed that the way we communicate crime has changed and therefore it's really difficult to gauge what the past is in terms of like levels of violence versus where we are today what you know so so anyway look bottom line is we got a bad guy in the you know lose people need to be careful and people need to be aware of their surroundings at all times and report it as soon as they see it yeah unfortunately this looks like they've got the what I don't have in custody yet they're still looking for this uh this individual uh out of woodb Kentucky Joseph couch is his name he's 32 years old and there's plenty of descriptions and his I guess pictures of him all over the place too that's still looking for this guy fortunately it was a one-off but it's kind of concerning because you look at this and go wow um it doesn't take much for someone who is a I don't know maybe a a foreign or domestic terrorist to repeat what happened in DC 20 years ago and going to shooting rampage from rural areas towards highways and and that would absolutely wreak havoc with our economic structure and certainly Transportation because that's the heart of it Dr Alex Del Carman at charlon State University's a criminologist and terrorism expert thanks for jumping in this morning I appreciate it thanks for having me yeah be well