They have his name, desription, and picture. Soon they'll have his ass.
Posted on 03/16/2004 8:15:18 AM PST by flutters
The suspect in a series of shootings that killed one woman and terrorized central Ohio is a troubled 28-year-old man who lived with his mother near the center of the shooter’s favored territory.
Authorities were seeking Charles A. McCoy Jr. last night in connection with the series of at least 24 shootings across four counties since May — many along I-270 in southern Franklin County.
McCoy should be considered armed and dangerous, said Chief Deputy Steve Martin of the Franklin County sheriff’s office, and the national all-points bulletin issued to police said he is mentally unstable.
As of last night, McCoy had been charged with one count — felonious assault in the shooting of a house at 901 Brown Rd. on Dec. 15, which is matched ballistically to eight other shootings, including the one that killed 62-yearold Gail Knisley.
Sources told The Dispatch that McCoy’s father, Charles A. McCoy Sr., gave authorities two of his son’s 9 mm Beretta guns and ammunition on Friday.
One of those guns proved to be a ballistic match to bullet fragments recovered from nine of the serial shootings, sources said last night.
Within hours of making that ballistic match, Martin asked for the public’s help in locating McCoy Jr.
McCoy is said to drive a dark green 1999 four-door Chevrolet Metro with a black hood and the Ohio license plate CGV7387.
Martin refused to comment about McCoy’s guns or the ballistic tests but cautioned that "we believe he bought another gun."
Two sources confirmed last night that McCoy recently bought a new 9 mm gun at a Columbus shop.
Within minutes of the description of his car hitting the airwaves last night, authorities were swamped with calls from people across Columbus reporting that they had seen cars fitting the description.
McCoy was last seen at 4 p.m. Friday at the South Side house at 989 Radbourne Dr. owned by his mother, Ardith, according to a missing-person report. She told Columbus police that her son suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, according to the report.
He attended Grove City High School in the South-Western School District — the same district that canceled classes twice before holiday break after two buses were shot.
McCoy disappeared a day after a relative called police naming him as a suspect.
According to a source inside the investigation, this is how events played out during the past five days:
A relative, who was not identified by Martin or investigation sources, said that Charles McCoy Sr. took four guns from his son after the Valentine’s Day shooting on I-70 in Licking County.
Detectives went looking for Charles McCoy Jr. on Thursday but couldn’t find him.
On Friday, the father returned messages the detectives had left.
Columbus detectives went to McCoy Sr.’s home at 104 South St. in Groveport, where he showed them the four guns and ammunition he had confiscated.
Two interested them: two 9 mm Berettas. Investigators had long known the shooter had been using a 9 mm handgun. Some in the news media also knew about the weapon but chose not to disclose it to avoid encouraging copycats.
Authorities took the guns and ammunition to the Columbus Crime Lab, where they were tested yesterday.
One of the two proved a ballistic match to bullet fragments found in nine of the serial shootings, including the one at the Brown Road home.
The match was confirmed by an official from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation.
Last night, a multiagency task force was searching McCoy Sr.’s home and Ardith McCoy’s South Side home.
Meanwhile, McCoy Jr. remained on the lam.
Martin said he is 5 feet 7 inches, 185 pounds and has brown hair and green eyes.
McCoy has been pulled over by law-enforcement officers for speeding at least twice since the shootings began.
He was clocked at 82 mph on I-270 in Prairie Township at 6:30 p.m. on May 26. And one week before Hamilton Elementary School was shot, he was cited for driving 59 in a 35 mph zone on Obetz Road in Columbus about 3 miles from the school. He admitted to speeding both times and paid fines.
Although the shootings had been happening for months, authorities didn’t begin piecing them together until Knisley was killed on Nov. 25 while riding in a car driven by a friend on I-270 east of I-71. She is the only fatality in the series of 24 shootings.
The first shooting was May 10 on the south Outerbelt near I-71. The most recent was Feb. 14 in Licking County from an I-70 overpass near Etna.
Most of the shootings have been in Franklin County — 21 between May 10 and Feb. 3. Others have been in Fayette, Licking and Madison counties. The shot that killed Knisley was among the nine shootings linked by ballistics.
The shooter had become more brazen in the five shootings since January, standing on freeway overpasses in broad daylight and firing into vehicles on the interstates.
One of the witnesses to the Feb. 14 shooting in Licking County said it appeared that the shooter — a clean-cut white man in his 30s or 40s — was driving a dark-colored Metro.
"Our particular shooter is becoming much more aggressive, much bolder, in letting himself be seen by the public," Martin said after that shooting.
"His intent is to hurt somebody."
As the shootings continued, central Ohioans vacillated between fear and anger, changing their commute routes in some cases and fantasizing about vigilante justice in others.
Concerned citizens reported more than 1,400 people as possible suspects and have offered 5,587 tips to date.
Authorities from sheriff’s offices, police departments and the State Highway Patrol spent thousands of hours chasing down leads and investigating possible shootings — many of them false alarms.
They have his name, desription, and picture. Soon they'll have his ass.
That's me! I was thinking, "I bet my car could run a little Geo Metro off the road, no problem!"
Paranoid schitzophrenic, hmm? Well now they really are out to get him!
Plus that case to place in the liberal center of the world, not out in flyover country. Ohio might as well be Sri Lanka to the national press.
Save the taxpayers the trouble of paying for his trip to hell.
Now that's a great choice for a getaway car. <|:/~
He looks like an adult bed-wetter.
Then some humped-up liberal judge will most likely turn his ass loose again.
Lacks proper training
And that’s really him that they are talking about on the TV and the radio!
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Great, the moron went to my old high school.
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