As many as a half-dozen people were shot along a highway in the southern US state of Kentucky, authorities said Saturday, as police hunted for a suspect considered “armed and dangerous.”
Four to six people had been shot, Kentucky State Police spokesman Scottie Pennington told local media.
There were “multiple severe injuries” but no confirmed deaths, local news station WYMT reported.
Authorities were searching for Joseph Couch, 32, considered a person of interest in the shooting that temporarily closed Interstate 75 in both directions due to the “active shooter situation.”
“Consider armed and dangerous,” the sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post. “Do not attempt to approach.”
Pennington posted on Facebook that “we are urging people to stay inside.”
He later told the Louisville Courier Journal that “we have no clue where (the suspect) is at.”
Rural Laurel County is south of the city of Lexington along I-75, a major north-south artery cutting across the eastern half of the United States.
Saturday’s incident comes after two students and two teachers were killed in a school shooting in Georgia.
A 14-year-old boy was charged with murder while his father, who had allegedly purchased the gun for him as a gift, was charged with involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder.
– More guns than people –
Gun violence is common in the United States, a country where there are more firearms than people.
Despite polls showing Americans favor more gun restrictions, a powerful gun rights lobby, constitutional protections and a passionate culture around firearm ownership mean that attempts to clamp down on weapons are always met with stiff political resistance.
A 2022 gun safety package passed by Congress was the most notable in decades, beefing up background checks and supporting states that passed so-called “Red Flag” laws, which allow for the seizure of weapons from people deemed high risk.
Still, advocates say much more needs to be done.
That same year, over 48,000 people died as a result of firearms, according to the surgeon general, which this year issued a landmark advisory declaring gun violence a “public health crisis.”
Gun rights and gun violence regularly feature in elections.
Republican candidate Donald Trump, seen by his party as a champion for gun rights, posted on social media that “our hearts are with the victims” of the Georgia shooting.
Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, a onetime prosecutor and attorney general of California and former US senator, called on Congress to “finally” pass an assault weapons ban.
It would be similar to the one President Joe Biden helped write as a senator and get passed into law in 1994 which expired after a decade, without being renewed by Congress.
