By Janice Morse
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Right now, Ohio's elusive highway shooter is probably mingling with lots of people - but they just haven't noticed clues that would reveal his secret, says Ken Cooper, a New York gun expert familiar with highway-shooting cases.

"A lot of people know him. They work with him, they eat with him and they may even sleep with him," Cooper said Tuesday. "They just don't realize it yet."

Local, state and federal police agencies have been trying to catch the shooter - or shooters - who fired 23 shots into buildings and vehicles since May. One woman has been killed.

The attacks have moved south from the Columbus area, closer to Greater Cincinnati. The most recent happened Sunday on Interstate 71 in Fayette County, about an hour north of Cincinnati.

Since then, police in Warren County have been keeping a closer watch on interstates and overpasses. An Ohio State Highway Patrol airplane is remaining airborne as much as possible during daylight hours, ready to quickly track the shooter if witnesses spot him in action again, as they did Sunday. That type of observation and action will ultimately lead to the shooter's arrest, Cooper said.

"He's been sighted. His armor has broken. There's a chink in his metal plating. The cops are going to get in there and pry it open, with the help of the citizens in that area," Cooper said.

"That's what solves all of these big cases," he said. "Everyone better shine up their glasses, get the earwax out of their ears and look up from staring at their feet - because this guy's going to kill somebody else unless he's stopped."

Sgt. Stan Jordan of the Ohio State Highway Patrol's Lebanon post shares that fear. But he said, "If he's bold enough to keep doing it, he'll be caught eventually." Until then, troopers "just know to look a little harder and be a little more observant at the overpasses," Jordan said.

Warren County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Del Everett said his office had received few calls from citizens and hasn't yet taken any special action. "We're just watching things a little closer," he said.

Ditto for people in Fayette County. "There's people looking at every overpass, side road, everything you can think of," said Larry Camp, 35, who was working Tuesday at Bottom Dollar Gun & Archery Pro Shop - located just down Prairie Road from one overpass from which the gunman fired. "Most folks around here are tense.... Basically, everybody wants it to end."

Authorities say they cannot generate a "profile" of the shooter because he is striking randomly. But Cooper, director of Tactical Handgun Training, a New York State-certified training center for police, has developed some general theories about the gunman.

In December, Cooper said he thought the shooter was probably using a handgun - the type of weapon witnesses saw Sunday - rather than a rifle.

"It only takes seconds for some knucklehead to get out of his car, fire his little handgun and not care about whether he even hit anything until he reads about it in the newspaper the next day," Cooper said.

A handgun is much more portable, easier to handle and easier to conceal than a rifle, he pointed out.

"Handguns can reach out and touch people at long distances, too," Cooper said.

"He's not even a marksman. He's just a low-life, firing at random," Cooper said.

Cooper, who is also director of safety and security at Bard College, surmises that the shooter is "probably a worker bee that's restricted by his job," and commits his crimes on weekends or on his days off.

Cooper pointed out that some criminals go undetected for years - until someone notices something.

E-mail jmorse@enquirer.com