April 16, 2025 • 53 mins
Damien Laron McDaniel III - The alleged Mass Murderer nobody has heard about outside of Birmingham, Alabama. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack trace the path of destruction and death attributed to Damien McDaniel III. Joe Scott explains what a mass casualty event looks like to investigator and how each person killed in a Mass casualty incident is a separate murder case, even though multiple murders happen at the same address.
Transcribe Highlights
00:03.38 Introduction
01:59.92 On person responsible for 14 homicides
05:57.48 14 Dead in 14 months
11:11.25 The number of injured is even higher
17:29.01 First murder victim was a firefighter
21:57.34 Is killer also a paid hitman?
26:16.14 Chaos of mass casualty incident
32:24.30 Person found dead outside club, not intended target?
37:48.82 Each body is an individual case
42:27.10 Same person involved in two mass shooting invidents
46:37.75 Local hospital overwhelmed
52:19.28 Was killer trying to create chaos to hid intended target
58:52.19 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quality Times. But Joseph Scotten more about a month ago,
I was contacted by a news reporter, and it's not
unusual to have the press reach out to me. I'm
on these all these programs, and you know, I never
(00:23):
you know, my wife always says, and my buddy Dave
always says, I'm not in a position where I can
really say no. And I take that to heart, and
I rarely do say no. But this, this was a
different phone call because it wasn't a national news reporter
from you know, one of the big, you know, traditional
(00:44):
mainstream media types. This was from a local news station
in Birmingham, Alabama, which you know, Dave and I roughly,
you know, live about sixty five sixty miles I guess,
east of Birmingham, as close as big city for us.
(01:05):
And what she wanted to talk to me about was
something that was so mind blowing that had occurred in Birmingham,
and I couldn't believe what I was hearing at the
time because of the sheer scale of it. Most of
(01:26):
the time, when we talk about deaths in America, we
think of deaths in terms of numbers. Certainly that's the
way the media measures it, and to a certain degree.
Those of us that are death investigators, we remembered those
huge events because they're so complex and difficult to watch
(01:49):
and participate in. This had happened almost in our backyard,
and it was a single individual who is responsible for
fourteen homicides. Let me say that number again. Fourteen homicides
(02:14):
and multiple other injuries, and they didn't all occur at
the same time. That's what we're going to be talking
about on body Bags today. I'm Josephcotten Morgan and this
is body Bags. Brother Dave. You and I have spent
(02:38):
a considerable amount of time in Birmingham over the years.
You certainly more so than I. You had a very
steady gig there for a long time and worked in
local radio and traveled up and down the road back
and forth, and you've seen more of it than I have.
I've had some great concert experiences and things like that
(02:59):
over the years. Birmingham and it's you know, it's not
what it used to be. It is a relatively dangerous
place to a certain degree. I'll throw a number out
to you. It's essentially they have a homicide rate that
(03:20):
came in last year. It's seven in ten thousand, people.
For every ten thousand people, there are seven homicides.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I didn't realize it was that high.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
It's pretty dog on high. It's at one point in time,
over the last decade it was per capita. It had
become one of the most violent cities in America. And
it's a real shame. It's got a lot of beauty
to it. I think about people don't think about mountains
in Alabama, but it's ringed by, you know, this beautiful
little series of ridges. Birmingham itself kind of sits down
(03:58):
in a bowl and it's surrounded. You know. When I
was a kid, one of the things I remember traveling
down I twenty and we'd go through Birmingham. I couldn't
see Birmingham because it was considered to be the Pittsburgh
of the South. That's where steel was manufactured, and you
couldn't see it, and so it had this kind of
(04:18):
black cloud that floated over it. But there was a
lot of money, you know, people like Union, Carbid and
US Steel were there, and of course they all left
after a period of time. The sky is cleared up,
but what was left behind were a lot of poor people.
A lot of poor people, you know, Joe. As we
were looking at this topic. You know, it's interesting how
(04:43):
you think of Birmingham versus how I do, And it
really comes down to a background of what we do
for a living, what we've done.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Prior to this. My world has always been on the radio,
and depending on what format you know, it's it's just
crazy how you look at a market. You break it
down economically, and we're your listener pockets and things like that.
You know by zip codes and by addresses, and you
learn a lot about a city's economics and basically you
learn the nitty gritty of a city to know where
(05:11):
you need to do your promoting in your marketing, and
Birmingham is one of those places that has such an
incredible history that it defies a lot of the normal
things that you do when you try to figure out
where to market. You actually have to consider every part
of the city and then beyond that because in the
Birmingham metro area you have one of the fastest growing
(05:34):
cities in the nation in Hoover, Alabama, that just kind
of blurs in with Birmingham. So it's a wonderful place,
really interesting. I had a lot of fun there. I
had a lot of a lot of my career was
spent on the air in Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham and Raleigh
are very I love both of them. And anyway, when
I saw this number, Damian McDaniel, is he a mass
(05:57):
killer or a serial killer?
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Joe?
Speaker 2 (05:59):
We've got fourteen people dead in fourteen months, and all
I could think of is, why is this not a
national story being screamed by you know, every crime talk
show person there is. We haven't talked about it, but
our show is body Bags, and we have mentioned this
(06:20):
a couple of times to one another. As a matter
of fact, when we first talked about it, it wasn't fourteen.
I think it was eleven.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah, yeah it was. And now he's there have been
more deaths attributed, you know, to him, and well, I
have to say, I have to say this very plainly.
You asked me about serial killer versus a mass killer
or a mass killing. There are elements here I think
(06:48):
that would define him as potentially both. That's what makes
this kind of rare. I think that this would be
like with the Behavioral Sciences Unit at the FBI, this
would certainly these cases that are laid at his feet
or have been laid and he's only been charged, he
(07:09):
has not been convicted at this point. The Behavioral Sciences Unit,
they would consider this to be an outlier. This is
something somebody that they would want to study and the
events surrounding this, because I don't know, I don't know
how a person like this is produced. That when you
(07:33):
start off at such an intense level like this and
you continue to literally blast your way through the city's
population at these various spots, and they happened on different dates,
you know, most of the time with I was you know,
as you know, we were just up in Long Island
(07:53):
at the Hamptons who done it, And we got into
a discussion up there about Lisk with others around us.
And you know, there have been a lot of cases
now that have been laid it at rex Huerman's feed
as well, and they say that there could be more.
I'm hearing that from locals up there, and I think
a lot of people concur with that. Those crimes were
(08:19):
committed over a protracted period of time and they were
in fact serialized. So if you just you know, you
think about you know, like series TV, you know the
way it used to be where you get one episode
per week. Okay, that's a series of events, all right.
Then you have a mass event where someone walks in
and they kill multiple people, and there's generally not a
(08:45):
number applied to that other than the way we've always
defined it in my world, not not behavioral scientists, but
the way we've always defined it in my world has
been how much strain can your system handle relative to
(09:06):
triaging out injured individuals and then handling the number of
dead that you have at a scene that are physically
dead at the scene than those that die at the hospital,
and can your facilities handle all of these deaths? And
that's kind of how we measure it. It's a bit
different than maybe the rest of the world looks at it.
And from a system standpoint, when I look at this,
(09:32):
it would be a strain, you know, because look, if
you're in some small little town and you have three
people that are killed, all right, and say you've got
a population of twelve hundred folks, all right, you got
three people killed at one time. That's going to strain,
that's going to tax your resources incredibly. People don't think
(09:53):
about that. You just think, well, we got three three
people that have been killed. How big of a lift,
it is, well, it's a huge lift. When everybody that
works that that have critical positions there, many of them
are volunteer individuals, okay. And then if you're isolated, how
are you going to get the bodies to a morgue,
how are you going to get the samples to the
(10:13):
crime lab. All these things come into play and you
don't think about it. That's the reason people study things
like emergency management. You know, there is a post mortem
section within emergency management. But back to the idea of
this being a serialized event most of the time. When
we were talking about up in Long Island, they've got
another guy up there that they'd like for at least
(10:34):
two homicides, but based upon the template that has been
put forward traditionally for serial killers, he wouldn't qualify. Generally
it's three or more, okay, But Dave, this guy takes
the cake in Birmingham as far as I'm concerned, because
(10:57):
he he has that is in fact gone well above
double digits here. And when you begin to think about
also the the number of injured, and we don't know
what that means when they say injured, because you can
have look, you can be injured and you can be
(11:19):
injured because of a ricochet off of an asshalt surface
and maybe a fragment of bullet or a fragment of
asshalt goes into your leg. Well you're injured. But you
can also be injured by taking around to your to
your mid line of your abdomen and severing your spinal cord.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
And then you're yeah, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
It's a huge it's a huge gulf. And I'm sorry, no, no, no,
And so you're just you're looking at that and and
let me tell you something else. And this is kind
of interesting. People don't think about this. If you have someone,
for instance, that is shot in one of these events
and they're put on a vent, and I see you somewhere,
(12:02):
and I've worked cases like this, Dave. They're put on
a vent, and I don't care if it's two decades
to go by, if it's three decades to go by,
and they survive all that time, maybe they're in a
nursing facility. When they die, their manner of death is
ruled as a homicide because you it's you know, it's
the old one of a nail, you know, a horse
(12:24):
shoe was lost. It's like if those if his path
had not crossed that individual's path that night, he had
not fired that weapon striking that individual, would the person
otherwise have been injured like this, okay, And there's no
way to say any otherwise, you know that would not
have happened. So the responsibility for the injuries, and if
(12:47):
they die eventually, that goes on his account as well.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Dave, that's such an interesting thing. The first time I
heard that explain to me, it makes perfectly good sense.
It's just you can die many years later and the guy,
he might already be dead, but you know it's still
a murder and he's responsible. I want to get to
one thing very quickly because when this story was first
(13:11):
brought to me, and I actually checked my email on
this just a few minutes ago, it was after the
first murders or the first murderer of a firefighter, because
it happened in July of twenty twenty three. Joe and
I remember the email came in and we were in
a period with the show where we had a little
bit of time to chill it with summertime and looking
(13:35):
over some of the stories. This one came across my
desk and it was when two firefighters on July twelfth
of twenty twenty three, Jordan Melton and Jamal Jones. They
were doing their routine maintenance okay at Station nine, which
is twenty seventh Street North in Norwood, which is an
(13:56):
area of Birmingham, and while they were working, a man
they believe is Damian McDaniel, who we're actually talking about today,
entered the station through an open bay door that they
would leave this door open. Talk about a community. They
left this door to the fire station open, Joe, because
they lived in an area that had a number of
(14:16):
elderly citizens, not always in the great health, and they
wanted them to have a place to go to have
their blood sugar check, to have their pulse, their heart rate,
things like that. And every day people would come by
and it saved them a trip to the doctor or
an ambulance ride to the hospital or they just the
things we do not think about that fire rescue people
(14:37):
do on a daily basis really does restore your faith
in mankind.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
And you know how I feel about firefighters. I've made
this perfectly clear. And let me say this again. Yeah, cops,
I get you know. You can say and that make
a big deal out of community policing and all these
sorts of things. Firefighters have been doing community work for
years and years, and that's one of the most attractive
(15:04):
things about the fire service is that they actually have
a house that is in the neighborhood. They refer to
it as the firehouse. Now, I'm not saying that they've
got a soup kitchen there, but if you're coming in
there and you're distressed there it's what's referred to as
a helping profession. And the fact that these two guys
(15:25):
had the bay doors open. And the one thing about
firefighters is I'm reminded of a fire station I used
to go to in Atlanta every now and then, and
I'd become friends the scroup of firefighters, and I'd go
by and eat some of the best food in the world,
by the way, and they made a big deal out
of cooking. The only thing is you either had to
(15:46):
bring something or you had to clean up afterwards, and
so I always volunteer to clean up. I didn't care
because food was so good. But you can come and go.
Did you let me throw out? Another interesting point about
firefighters dave. In most states, if you kill a firefighter
while they are on duty. Did you know that that's
(16:07):
an automatic capital offense.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
No, didn't know yet, Glad it is.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah, it's and in some states, if you kill a
teacher while they are at work, it's an automatic capital offense. So,
you know, he's rolled up on both of these guys,
who I can only imagine. You know, the thing that
they do. They love to wash those trucks. They love
to roll hoses. That's one of the things that they do.
(16:33):
They're pulling preventative maintenance. They got there. They're not walking
around with weapons on their on their hips. You know,
they're in there cleaning and keeping the bay clean and
keeping their keeping their units clean and all that sort
of thing. And this wild man walks in and for
no reason whatsoever, shoots both of these guys. It's it's
(16:53):
inexplicable day.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
He walks through the open bay door and opens fire.
They had no reason to suspect that that was going
to happen on that day. And the thing that gets
you really right in the heart is that Jordan Melton.
You know, he had only been on the job a year.
He was still he had just graduated from the recruit academy.
(17:17):
This is something that he was doing because he had
had passion for it and wanted to do it. And
he's still a rookie. He'd been with Birmingham Fire and
Rescue just about a year in time to you know,
go through the academy. I mean, it boggles my mind.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
He probably after a year, he'd probably just gotten off probation.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Are yes, and five days, five days after Damien McDaniel
allegedly walked into the bay for we still don't have
a reason, Joe and he died. Jordan died five days
Jordan Melton died five days after the shooting. Jamal Jones
was injured. But I just it still crushes your soul
(17:57):
to a degree when you think of guys who start
their day thinking of what they can do to help,
what they can do to make the world a better place,
and for no reason somebody comes in and opens fire.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Yeah, and looking at this case and cases in their totality,
now we know that with the injuries and subsequent death
of this young firefighter, this was only the beginning of
a reign of terror that dropped on the city of Burning.
(18:33):
Now fourteen dead and fourteen months Dave, Yeah, and I
(18:54):
have to say that we're going to talk about this more.
It's it's rather complex because we've got two real seminal
events here that occurred on separate nights. There are other
people that have been injured along the way, and looking
at it from an investigative perspective, I'm thinking what in
(19:20):
the world was going through the investigator's minds, because you know,
Birmingham it's I guess what would you classified as? Would
you say that it's kind of a mid size city
relative population. You think about the highway and.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
The metro area, and you didn't get the the metro
is you know, I guess a million people, and then
you include the what we just called the TSA, the
total surveyed area when you get into radio ratings, and
you know, I write it beyond that. But yeah, I mean,
you're talking about a metropolitan area that probably is in
the fifty eight in the country, you know, fifty to
fifty five to sixty some were ranking in there. Just
(19:58):
your mid size metropol an area with all the things
you'd expect. We've got legendary Birmingham Barons, you know, and
they play at the legendary rick Wood Field, which has
been redone. There's so many things that have taken place
in Birmingham. The historical value of the city alone, you
could do. I encourage Field to study and look at
the letter written by Martin Luther King Junior from the
(20:20):
Birmingham Jail and look at all that history that's living
and breathing, and half the people that live there don't
know it because they don't. And that's what burns me,
because it's a it is a wonderful, beautiful place. And
you know, anyway we can, we can do our our
chamber of commerce, you know, commercial later. But I wanted
(20:40):
to get to what it's like, Joe. What and I
don't mean that, not like Pourian interest, but what is
it like from your perspective of a mass killing situation?
And something did strike me. The reason we don't usually
have more than one mass killing by the same person
is because they usually kill them or they are killed
(21:01):
or they are killed.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Yeah, and every now and then, every now and then
they will be subdued by the police, they'll flee and
sometimes the police catch them. But you know, many times
with those individuals, you you learn later that they've got
some kind of weird psychopathology that's going on, and they've
(21:23):
been quote unquote troubled and all this sort of thing.
They weren't in their right mind, Dave. The term paid
hitman has come up in the narrative, and so that
makes this all the more chilling. You know, when I
think paid hitman, I'm thinking about the movie Iceman. The
Iceman came out a few years ago with Michael Shannon is. Yeah,
(21:47):
it's based on a true story, and this guy killed
tons of people, but was living a normal life, was
a great father, They went to church, you know, the
whole nine yards. This is this is something. This is
a new creature that we're seeing here because it's so
(22:08):
so horrible relative to the idea. Here's what it gets me.
It's like you develop a thirst for it almost, it
would seem, or maybe your thirst is money. How much
money are you paid to take another person's life individually?
How much more so if you go in and kill
(22:31):
multiple people and is your target one person within a
mass grouping and you're just going to take everybody else out.
I can tell you from a forensics perspective, based upon
the mass shootings that I've worked over the years, which
there have been a few, it's something that you don't
(22:54):
get passed easily. I think that one of the most
difficult things is the fact that you're standing among the dead,
and that sounds kind of odd. It's not like standing
among the dead and the morgue, you know, where you've
got bodies that are on stainless steel tables they're about
to be autopsy he or you walk into the cooler
(23:16):
and there's bodies on gurnies. That's different. You're talking about
walking into a parking lot and there are dead people
to your left and to your right, or there there
is like massive pools of blood that have been left
(23:36):
behind by those that have been evacuated and they're going
to eventually die. You've got people that are still there
on seen and it's like it's like mass chaos when
you roll up. You really have to be able to
find that place in your mind and in your heart
where and I know this sounds real new ag. I
don't know how else to put it, where you can
(23:57):
kind of center yourself, where you can block out everything
because there's a lot of static because people people freak out.
Many people do that have become witnesses, as I think
they have a right to. You know, how else would
you react? I know how I would react, but you know,
you want to be as an investigator when you roll
(24:19):
up on one of these things, you want to be
that kind of calm in the storm, because your job
involves examining every bit of evidence that's there. One of
the biggest nightmares, particularly at night, I always because I
screwed up so many times. I always tell my students
is that when you're walking about in the dark and
(24:42):
maybe you pass over some of the flashlight and you
didn't notice it, and you hear a metallic tink that
kind of travels across the concrete or the asphalt, and
you just realize you kicked the shell casing that you
didn't see, or you hear something at the runch under
and the crunch on your foot. It's a nightmare because
you don't always see everything in a poorly lit area.
(25:03):
And the mass shootings that we're talking about actually took place.
You know at one place is like an illegal an
illegal club that was dispensing alcohol, and another place is
a legitimate place that was like in a strip mall right.
You have a huge group of people kind of.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Gathered out there, and you know, I'm so glad you
started this up. I mentioning that the term hit man
has been thrown around, you know, getting paid to kill somebody.
And I was looking over kind of a timeline, but
before we did this very quickly, I'm going to throw
something out there to you. When we're talking about mass
casualty event A lot of times, you know, body bags,
we focus on crime, but you know there are mass
(25:45):
casualty events that do not include guns and Ammo and
anybody doing anything. I was in once and when you
were describing the chaos unseen in a natural disaster. A
tornado hits a building and you've got the dead, the dying,
the wounded. I mean, it's a crazy scene, and you're
not in fear of somebody running around with a gun.
(26:06):
It's crazy enough in that and it just hit me
what it must be like for those in a scene
where you've got that mat that shooter. You know, it
wasn't a natural disaster, It wasn't something that just happened.
You know, it was somebody who actually grabbed a gun
and went into Trendsetter's nightclub and opened fire. But he
got warmed up. You know, we got in July of
(26:27):
twenty twenty three, going into a fire station and allegedly
killing one wounding another. Then five and a half six
months later, January twenty twenty four, Mia and Nixon or
Nickerson is actually wounded at her Mia Nixon is wounded
at her house and dies in her driveway. She's a
twenty one year old woman. Now McDaniel is tied to
(26:47):
that murder. Go a couple of months later and we're
at a UPS facility, Joe, April twenty twenty four. Okay,
so now it's the timeline's getting tighter, you know. July
twenty twenty three, January twenty twenty four. Now April twenty
twenty four, and a guy, Anthony Love Junior gets off work.
He's going through the parking lot and he gets shot
and killed right there on his way leaving work. Now
(27:11):
a couple of months later, it's one year after the
shooting at the fire station. July twenty twenty four. You're
at Trendsetters in Birmingham. It's just after eleven o'clock on
July three pm. On July thirteenth, officers respond to the
call multiple shots fired. Joe, you've heard that call go out? Yeah,
(27:36):
you know, the first responders go and you know, chances
are You're going to be in the thick of that
at some point soon.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yeah. And the way that it works most of tom
if you're an Emmy investigator or corner investigator, you're sitting
there and you have your radio on and you're on
the main channel. Are on there as a headquarters dispatch.
This is what it was in Atlanta, and you'll hear
a call that will come up, and this would have
been a call that would have gone out to the
(28:08):
every zone of precinct in the city, because you've got
multiple precincts. Most of the precincts have their own radio channel,
but they would have sent this thing out broadly. Because
if you've got a what turns out to be a
mass shooting and these things start to trickle in your ear,
all of a sudden tunes into this and you can
(28:28):
hear you can actually hear the voices changed on the radio.
It's kind of chilling. The voices change, the tenor of
the voices changed. You can tell that there's an urgency
because the first thing they're trying to do is secure
(28:49):
the scene relative to is there still an active shooter.
And then you've got people in the background that are
screaming and pain. And you've got people that were not
shot that are trying to render aid and they're screaming
as well because they don't know what the environment is safe.
(29:10):
And then people that are not used to being around
dead bodies are suddenly staring down at maybe a person
that was standing there with a drink in their hand
one moment and the next thing you know, they're bleeding
out on the ground next to you, and they eventually
die and you watch them die. So, yeah, it's a
matter chaos and what you're listening for. My radio number
(29:33):
in Atlanta used to actually be Emmy thirteen. What a
number right? And I would hear them call out. They
would say can you roll the meme? And I knew
that if I had heard that preceded by that there
had been a mass shooting event, I knew that I
was going to have to contact our affiliate drivers and say, listen,
you guys need to be in a bullpen warming up
(29:54):
because we're going to have more than We're going to
have a need for more than one vehicle to train
and support the remains that we're going to have out there.
And so you're thinking and the time to think about
this and planet is not when it happens. You have
to be exercised and prepared before this happens, and you
don't want to think that it is, but it always does,
(30:15):
and it is, and it's still chaos when you roll
up out there. Because this is the thing about it
is that an event like this, as disgusting as it
is to think about, attract spectators and there's no way
to keep them out. And you say, well, what, yeah,
oh yeah, yeah. I've actually been on scenes Dave at
(30:38):
four o'clock in the morning where I've had mothers standing
outside the tape holding a newborn or six month old
on their hip, laughing and carrying on with other new
mothers standing outside the tape watching everything that we do.
I've seen I've actually seen little kids. It's playing in
(31:00):
the dirt outside of tape where we've had shootings and
the kids are just playing. It's you know, it's normalized.
And so it's an absolutely horrible thing to bear witness
to because I'm thinking, you know, as rough as my
childhood was, I was never exposed to anything like this,
(31:22):
And you know, how is this going to impact How
does it impact an entire neighborhood? When you know that
this is happening out there and this is not something
that happens every day.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Right now, Joe, something that catches my attention on this one. Now,
we kind of broke it down as to how we
got to this point a year after the very first
shooting involving Damien McDaniel, but the third. But in this
particular case, a birthday party or something was going on
inside the club, trendsetters and a disagreement, scuttle whatever you
(31:52):
want to call it. Something happened inside that club, and
the shooting was done from the outside. They officers found
a thirty nine year old man on the street or
Stevie McGee I think it was his name. Anyway, they
find him or her is Steve. I don't know if
Stevie's a man or a woman. I apologize for that anyway,
(32:15):
thirty nine year old is found on the sidewalk outside
the club and when they it pronounced dead, they go
inside the club and they find more dead bodies. Damian
mcg is still Damien McDaniel is still in the middle
of this. Now, there's other people involved in the shooting
(32:37):
as well, but Damien McDaniel, how does he go from
being the suspect for killing at the fire department and
then on the scene of a twenty one year old
woman at her house, and then a ups driver and
now a mass casualty event at a nightclub drive by shooting,
picking off whoever happens. If you're not going to be
(33:00):
able to pick people to shoot when you're out on
the street, Joe shooting into a building, it's just it'shooting
whoever you can.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Yeah, and it's a that's what makes this particularly evil
in my estimation, at least.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
I'm with you. That's what I was trying to figure out.
I mean, not like any murder is better than another.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
But no, no, but you have to contextualize it.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah, you're tying to be able to take to shoot
into a building with a bunch of people at a
birthday party.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Yeah, you're right. And when you say birthday party, you're
going to have all manner of people that are there.
You might have people that I don't know that like
to drink and party, and you might have other people
there that just want to come by, and a well
wisher you know that just says I'm going to slide
by tonight and just tell my man, you know, happy Birthday,
and to randomize it like this. One of the things
(33:49):
you're looking at as well is if the shooting starts
outside and it's passing through the wall or through the door,
this is going to calm implicate the forensics in many ways.
Did you know that when if you've got someone in
is standing like immediately adjacent to what we call an
intermediary target, and that round passes through that wall, whether
(34:17):
it's a press board or if it's some kind of
external siding, it goes through insulation, then it passes through
dry wall. A lot of that stuff that's in the
wall depends upon where the individual is relative to where
the bullet actually enters the room. The physical space is
(34:38):
carrying a lot of that stuff with it. First off,
the bullet's going to be deformed, so it's going to
be real hard to get rifling off the bullet, and
a lot of that other stuff fragments and becomes almost
like shrapnel. I've seen many cases where I've seen bits
of particle board buried into people's bodies, where there has
been multiple rounds that have been popped off, And you'll
(35:02):
see this over and over again, and so it makes
us even more complex then to pull the trajectories that
you're going to have to try to understand. Like if
we're pulling trajectories at a scene and you have an
external shooter. You've got a shooter that is outside of
the building and they're firing a weapon into that building.
(35:27):
We used to use trajectory rods, but now which are
these static rods that you can place through a hole
and I'll give you an idea of directionality of the bullet,
the pitch of the bullet. Did it move from right
to left, left to right, that sort of thing. But
now we use lasers, and so you'll see these kind
of colored lasers too. Most common are generally green and red.
(35:50):
And if you can pass those through a defect in
the wall, you can track that back to the point
of origin where the individual was shooting from perhaps, and
then that trajectory line will pass through where the person
was physically standing or stooped when they were shot. Now
they might not they're obviously if they were standing, they're
not going to be in the same position. But it'll
(36:11):
give you an idea forensically as to the position of
the individual when they were when the bullet struck them. Initially,
you know where it marries up with that person's body. Now,
if they're shot and they run away, it's not going
to be it's not going to provide as much actual information.
(36:33):
But if they drop where they were shot, you can say, okay, well,
based upon this line of trajectory and get idea, this
individual's positioned in this location when the shooting started, and
where is the round anatomically in the body. Was it
like an immediate death where they're struck in the mid chest,
where they're struck in the head, they struck in the
(36:55):
lower back where maybe they didn't die immediately they just
laid their blood out, or with somebody shot here and
they were like shot in the shoulder and then they
went for cover after that. It gets very very complex,
and that's why scenes like this day they take hours
upon hours to work. You know, you don't think because
(37:17):
for everybody that is there, Okay, just let me break
this down for you and our friends, for everybody that
is there, think of it this way. Just like everybody
has their own name, each one of these bodies is
an individual case. Okay, all right, So this isn't just
(37:40):
one case. If you've got multiple individuals that are shot
in one location. Yeah, you got same address. But for
every person that is either wounded or killed, they have
an individual case number that is placed with them. Well
why is that important, Well, it's important. For one, it
helps us identify that specific individual and we will work
(38:07):
that case. Let's just say it's case number twenty five
zero zero zero one, first case of the year. Well,
lying next to them a zero zero zero two and
then zero zero zero three. So these are separately jacketed
and so you work that case individually, and it's going
to take more than one of you to do this.
(38:28):
Most of the time, with a mass shooting, you have
to break it down into teams. Ideally, and we did
this with a bucket shooting in Atlanta all those years ago.
We had three person teams that went in and worked
each body. So you'd have an em investigator, homicide detective,
and a forensic tech. Said, one person examining the body,
(38:48):
one person doing the periphery of the body, and then
you had another person documenting the body. And that's for
every it's that complex. And then you'll have a lead
investigator with the police department that will have to combine
all of these jackets. Okay of information each one of
these case files with an individual case number. It gets
(39:11):
so very complex. The complexity continues on when these people
are the deceased, at least eventually wind up wind up
at the morgue, because you handle each one of these
bodies individually and you work your way through it, and
(39:31):
it can be a nightmare at the morgue, say the
next day where you have a mass shooting. I've been
in a morgue where we've had mass shootings before where
we had seven people that were all killed in one event. Well,
they're lined up. You still have other cases that you
have to do, but these bodies are probably going to
take the numbers at the head of the line. Each
(39:52):
body has to be x rayed, each one of their
injuries has to be appreciated, their clothing has to be collected,
look for trace evidence, everything that is involved, and so
it's stacked. As you can imagine, it's like trying to
lane land planes and stormy weather and you're working each
individual case and you have to make sure that you
(40:12):
have the same day, that you have the same precision
on each one of these cases as you would if
it was a single homicide that you happened to catch
that day and that's the only homicide you had, so
and you get tired. I mean, it is physically draining
to have to do these, so you really have to
be on your p's and q's working your way through it.
(40:34):
What's fascinating about this is with this perpetrator, Dave, he
has literally been the trigger mechanism, literally and figuratively for
multiple of these events. Think about that, all of our friends,
(40:56):
think about that. For every time one of these rounds
slammed into one of our fellow citizens. A case number
is generated, forensics are generated, a case has started, a
case is investigated, a subject is charged, A subject will
(41:17):
eventually go to court, and we'll have a name. We'll
have a name for that individual as they stand before
the court and answer for what they have done. Dave,
(41:42):
you just reminded me of something that is again unique
to this case. I think. I think it's unique in
the sense of the numbers that we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Shocking is what it actually is.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Joe, Yeah, I guess, I guess. Yeah, shocking is probably
more active.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
I didn't think that was possible anymore. But what you
were talking about in document, I'm not the only person
who's going to say this show just didn't occur to
me what had to be generated during the course of
investigating a mass shooting, you know, where you're dealing with
multiple people wounded but are injured and dead in the
case of trendsetters in Birmingham, after the scene, you've got
(42:23):
you know, you have the dead on the floor and
what have you got the investigation going on, but and
there were people they were triaging there wounded individuals. Eleven
people that night went to UAB, which is a hospital
in Birmingham, University of Alabama, Birmingham, and they eleven people
went to the hospital with injuries afterwards that didn't go
(42:46):
through the police or anybody else at the scene. They
came on their own. And of those eleven victims, one
of those, a twenty four year old man, actually died
of his injuries at UAB after all of this had
gone on.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
That's yeah, it really is the volume, the volume that
you're talking about. You talk about total chaos because when
you have these individuals. First off, if you're UAB, which
is arguably I guess the largest trauma center maybe in
(43:25):
the state of Alabama, I would imagine it's a massive
teaching hospital. By the way, one of the finest in
the country. It's got a long standing history. You've got
these other eleven that have rolled in now knowing that
UAB is the trauma center to go to those individuals
(43:45):
that would have been tree edged at the scene and
thrown into ambulances and taken quickly to the hospital. They're
already filling up all the bays. Just think about everybody
in the sound of my voice right now. Just think
about what it's like if you've ever had to go
to emergency room on a busy night, and multiply that
by a factor of about one hundred. If you've got,
(44:07):
like I don't know, if you think that you've got
an uttep tummy and you decide to go to the
emergency room and you roll in there and you're writhing
in pain on a gurney, you're going to have taken
number and wait. That's what it comes down to. And
they might not get to you for hours upon hours
upon hours. As a matter of fact, they might say, look,
(44:28):
you're going to be better served by getting in your
car and going somewhere else because everything is going to
be thrown Because you've got people that have got gaping
defects in their body that are losing blood. You've got
people that have fractured bones. Oh, by the way, not
to mention, you've got people that got perforated organs, so
they're having to be evaluated and get them up to
(44:51):
a surgical suite. And then they've got to call in
all the trauma surgeons and all of the residents that
work for the trauma surgeons. Just to hand. It is
a war zone at this point time. Oh and by
the way, we've got eleven more people from the trend
Centers event that happened to come in what they refer
to as ambulatory They would walk in on their own
(45:14):
or maybe a friend drug them in. You're not bringing
them in by ambulance, so you're stacking. You're stacking more
on top. So it's a real stressor on the entire system.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Something I can imagine.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
They don't have more people that have died. It's kind
of amazing, Dave.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
You know, I've just shocked. I did not know what
all went into And now I'm now taking this a
little bit further on, and I'm thinking from a professional standpoint, Joe,
a lot of the men and women working in law
enforcement in the Medical Examiner's office seeing the number of
deaths like this, and you know, we have the trendsetters event,
(45:50):
and then you've got the people coming in after. But
you know, right on the heels of that Joe there
there were another group of murders that took place that
are going to be attributed to Damian McDaniel and others,
but in particular, on September the nineteenth, twenty twenty four,
a woman Deanentrey Deontrante to Nae Brown. They say she
(46:14):
was an innocent bystander in what amounted to a shooting
that took place outside or inside the six h four
bar and lounge. It was just this is a one off,
and boy, I feel like I'm I'm really being dismissive
and I'm not trying to point out what was going
on because again, these are all attributed to the same
person now, and by the way, there are also other
(46:36):
people that are joining McDaniel on different events of these.
And on September nineteenth, you've got ms Brown. On September
twenty first, two days after that murder outside of the
Hush Lounge, that another mass shooting event. You've got four
(46:57):
killed and seventeen others injured. This is a bar in
the Five Points area of Birmingham. This is an area
where there's a lot of foot traffic. It's a very
busy place, especially at night. It is a happening place.
And to have a mass casualty event, a mass shooting
event there Joe on the heels of what they've already seen.
(47:19):
I'm just thinking, if you're working in law enforcement and
going on these calls, do y'all talk amongst yourselves with
other professionals and discuss what's going on and say, what's
happening here?
Speaker 1 (47:34):
Yeah, And it's really easy to get caught up in
all the peripheral stuff that goes along, but you have
to draw your focus back to what's the most important thing,
and that is try to understand who are what you're
dealing with here are you? Have these people been targeted
because they're attending They're a member of some group, you know,
(47:57):
which doesn't seem likely because it seems on its face
it seems rather randomized. You've got people that are out
in the evening, but there are a lot of people
that are out in the evening. It seems to me
that this is it has a bit of organization to
it because if we go back to this premise that
(48:21):
he has been hired as a hitman, if he goes
in and creates as much chaos as he possibly can,
it sounds like something I have a movie. He can
target the one person that maybe he's being paid to
kill allegedly and creates a tremendous amount of chaos while
they're doing it. The target doesn't get away, and he
(48:44):
can blend in while he's doing it. Because with chaos,
it's amazing. When you go to take statements from people
at events like this, or I hate to say events
incidents like this, you'll get multiple descriptions of a perpetrator.
They won't all be the same. And the thing about
(49:05):
it is people are seeing it from different perspectives. Some
people are hearing things and they're not seeing anything, and
hearing sometimes can be just as good as seeing. If
you've got your head down and your face is buried,
your eyes are not turned, you're trying to avert, but
you hear them say something, maybe you pick up on
a certain word that they might use, some kind of
(49:26):
command that they might use, or if you're laying there
in the dirt and your face down you hear them
say they might call out somebody's name specifically, and that
gives you an indication of who the target was. Because
in a big group like this, how are you going
to know who's there? And are you there to specifically
identify somebody and you're going to take them out? But
(49:48):
so many of these things are randomized, Dave, that you
go all the way back to the firefighters, those two
unfortunate young men that were shot in the firehouse, one
of which died and the others survived. What you know,
it's it's almost like throwing a brick through a stained
glass window. Why are you going to do that? You know?
(50:10):
It just it doesn't make sense at all, unless again
it's a warm up act. And if if that's not
the warm up act, I want to know how far
in his past has he been committing violent crimes as well, Dave,
when this thing finally goes to trial, First off, it
is going to be a capital murder case. I can
(50:32):
you can take that to the bank. That's going to happen,
and he is going to be looking almost certainly at
the death penalty. Uh, They're they're going to make that happen.
I would would imagine the prosecutors the amount of forensic
evidence in this case. To say that it's a tidal
(50:56):
wave is an understatement because just like I mentioned, for
every person that was shot by this guy, there will
be ballistics, there's going to be forensic pathology that's going
to come into this. They're going to talk about things
like how long did they live, did they suffer? And
(51:18):
then you're going to have all of these people that
are also witnesses that have been injured that are going
to get up on the stand and they're going to
talk about what happened that night, and they're going to
talk about they're going to say the I can guarantee you,
I can see it come with prosecutors going to say, now,
if you don't mind me asking, sir, can he tell
us that night, the night of the shooting, where were
(51:40):
you shot? Specifically? Yeah, I was shot in my stomach twice.
And certain may ask how many surgeries that you have
to go through? I don't know, two three? How long
were you in the hospital? Two weeks? Three weeks? And
have you fully recovered? They be like this the rest
(52:00):
of my life. They're going to hear that in coordinate
over and over and over and over again. It's hard
to take the measure of the damage that has come
about at the hands of this individual. We're going to
stay on this case, watch it very very closely, and
(52:22):
keep everyone up to speed on it because this is
not going to be over with anytime soon. I'm going
to be interested to see if he has in fact
been involved in any other shootings that he could be
credited with, any other deaths, any other assaults. And the
big mystery here that the cops have not really let
(52:43):
onto a lot about at this point in time is
if he is a hit man, who is it that
hired him, what was their motivation, and where did he
get the weapons to perpetrate these crimes. I'm Joseph Scott
Morgan and this is Body Fast
Quality Times. But Joseph Scotten more about a month ago,
I was contacted by a news reporter, and it's not
unusual to have the press reach out to me. I'm
on these all these programs, and you know, I never
(00:23):
you know, my wife always says, and my buddy Dave
always says, I'm not in a position where I can
really say no. And I take that to heart, and
I rarely do say no. But this, this was a
different phone call because it wasn't a national news reporter
from you know, one of the big, you know, traditional
(00:44):
mainstream media types. This was from a local news station
in Birmingham, Alabama, which you know, Dave and I roughly,
you know, live about sixty five sixty miles I guess,
east of Birmingham, as close as big city for us.
(01:05):
And what she wanted to talk to me about was
something that was so mind blowing that had occurred in Birmingham,
and I couldn't believe what I was hearing at the
time because of the sheer scale of it. Most of
(01:26):
the time, when we talk about deaths in America, we
think of deaths in terms of numbers. Certainly that's the
way the media measures it, and to a certain degree.
Those of us that are death investigators, we remembered those
huge events because they're so complex and difficult to watch
(01:49):
and participate in. This had happened almost in our backyard,
and it was a single individual who is responsible for
fourteen homicides. Let me say that number again. Fourteen homicides
(02:14):
and multiple other injuries, and they didn't all occur at
the same time. That's what we're going to be talking
about on body Bags today. I'm Josephcotten Morgan and this
is body Bags. Brother Dave. You and I have spent
(02:38):
a considerable amount of time in Birmingham over the years.
You certainly more so than I. You had a very
steady gig there for a long time and worked in
local radio and traveled up and down the road back
and forth, and you've seen more of it than I have.
I've had some great concert experiences and things like that
(02:59):
over the years. Birmingham and it's you know, it's not
what it used to be. It is a relatively dangerous
place to a certain degree. I'll throw a number out
to you. It's essentially they have a homicide rate that
(03:20):
came in last year. It's seven in ten thousand, people.
For every ten thousand people, there are seven homicides.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I didn't realize it was that high.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
It's pretty dog on high. It's at one point in time,
over the last decade it was per capita. It had
become one of the most violent cities in America. And
it's a real shame. It's got a lot of beauty
to it. I think about people don't think about mountains
in Alabama, but it's ringed by, you know, this beautiful
little series of ridges. Birmingham itself kind of sits down
(03:58):
in a bowl and it's surrounded. You know. When I
was a kid, one of the things I remember traveling
down I twenty and we'd go through Birmingham. I couldn't
see Birmingham because it was considered to be the Pittsburgh
of the South. That's where steel was manufactured, and you
couldn't see it, and so it had this kind of
(04:18):
black cloud that floated over it. But there was a
lot of money, you know, people like Union, Carbid and
US Steel were there, and of course they all left
after a period of time. The sky is cleared up,
but what was left behind were a lot of poor people.
A lot of poor people, you know, Joe. As we
were looking at this topic. You know, it's interesting how
(04:43):
you think of Birmingham versus how I do, And it
really comes down to a background of what we do
for a living, what we've done.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Prior to this. My world has always been on the radio,
and depending on what format you know, it's it's just
crazy how you look at a market. You break it
down economically, and we're your listener pockets and things like that.
You know by zip codes and by addresses, and you
learn a lot about a city's economics and basically you
learn the nitty gritty of a city to know where
(05:11):
you need to do your promoting in your marketing, and
Birmingham is one of those places that has such an
incredible history that it defies a lot of the normal
things that you do when you try to figure out
where to market. You actually have to consider every part
of the city and then beyond that because in the
Birmingham metro area you have one of the fastest growing
(05:34):
cities in the nation in Hoover, Alabama, that just kind
of blurs in with Birmingham. So it's a wonderful place,
really interesting. I had a lot of fun there. I
had a lot of a lot of my career was
spent on the air in Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham and Raleigh
are very I love both of them. And anyway, when
I saw this number, Damian McDaniel, is he a mass
(05:57):
killer or a serial killer?
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Joe?
Speaker 2 (05:59):
We've got fourteen people dead in fourteen months, and all
I could think of is, why is this not a
national story being screamed by you know, every crime talk
show person there is. We haven't talked about it, but
our show is body Bags, and we have mentioned this
(06:20):
a couple of times to one another. As a matter
of fact, when we first talked about it, it wasn't fourteen.
I think it was eleven.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah, yeah it was. And now he's there have been
more deaths attributed, you know, to him, and well, I
have to say, I have to say this very plainly.
You asked me about serial killer versus a mass killer
or a mass killing. There are elements here I think
(06:48):
that would define him as potentially both. That's what makes
this kind of rare. I think that this would be
like with the Behavioral Sciences Unit at the FBI, this
would certainly these cases that are laid at his feet
or have been laid and he's only been charged, he
(07:09):
has not been convicted at this point. The Behavioral Sciences Unit,
they would consider this to be an outlier. This is
something somebody that they would want to study and the
events surrounding this, because I don't know, I don't know
how a person like this is produced. That when you
(07:33):
start off at such an intense level like this and
you continue to literally blast your way through the city's
population at these various spots, and they happened on different dates,
you know, most of the time with I was you know,
as you know, we were just up in Long Island
(07:53):
at the Hamptons who done it, And we got into
a discussion up there about Lisk with others around us.
And you know, there have been a lot of cases
now that have been laid it at rex Huerman's feed
as well, and they say that there could be more.
I'm hearing that from locals up there, and I think
a lot of people concur with that. Those crimes were
(08:19):
committed over a protracted period of time and they were
in fact serialized. So if you just you know, you
think about you know, like series TV, you know the
way it used to be where you get one episode
per week. Okay, that's a series of events, all right.
Then you have a mass event where someone walks in
and they kill multiple people, and there's generally not a
(08:45):
number applied to that other than the way we've always
defined it in my world, not not behavioral scientists, but
the way we've always defined it in my world has
been how much strain can your system handle relative to
(09:06):
triaging out injured individuals and then handling the number of
dead that you have at a scene that are physically
dead at the scene than those that die at the hospital,
and can your facilities handle all of these deaths? And
that's kind of how we measure it. It's a bit
different than maybe the rest of the world looks at it.
And from a system standpoint, when I look at this,
(09:32):
it would be a strain, you know, because look, if
you're in some small little town and you have three
people that are killed, all right, and say you've got
a population of twelve hundred folks, all right, you got
three people killed at one time. That's going to strain,
that's going to tax your resources incredibly. People don't think
(09:53):
about that. You just think, well, we got three three
people that have been killed. How big of a lift,
it is, well, it's a huge lift. When everybody that
works that that have critical positions there, many of them
are volunteer individuals, okay. And then if you're isolated, how
are you going to get the bodies to a morgue,
how are you going to get the samples to the
(10:13):
crime lab. All these things come into play and you
don't think about it. That's the reason people study things
like emergency management. You know, there is a post mortem
section within emergency management. But back to the idea of
this being a serialized event most of the time. When
we were talking about up in Long Island, they've got
another guy up there that they'd like for at least
(10:34):
two homicides, but based upon the template that has been
put forward traditionally for serial killers, he wouldn't qualify. Generally
it's three or more, okay, But Dave, this guy takes
the cake in Birmingham as far as I'm concerned, because
(10:57):
he he has that is in fact gone well above
double digits here. And when you begin to think about
also the the number of injured, and we don't know
what that means when they say injured, because you can
have look, you can be injured and you can be
(11:19):
injured because of a ricochet off of an asshalt surface
and maybe a fragment of bullet or a fragment of
asshalt goes into your leg. Well you're injured. But you
can also be injured by taking around to your to
your mid line of your abdomen and severing your spinal cord.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
And then you're yeah, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
It's a huge it's a huge gulf. And I'm sorry, no, no, no,
And so you're just you're looking at that and and
let me tell you something else. And this is kind
of interesting. People don't think about this. If you have someone,
for instance, that is shot in one of these events
and they're put on a vent, and I see you somewhere,
(12:02):
and I've worked cases like this, Dave. They're put on
a vent, and I don't care if it's two decades
to go by, if it's three decades to go by,
and they survive all that time, maybe they're in a
nursing facility. When they die, their manner of death is
ruled as a homicide because you it's you know, it's
the old one of a nail, you know, a horse
(12:24):
shoe was lost. It's like if those if his path
had not crossed that individual's path that night, he had
not fired that weapon striking that individual, would the person
otherwise have been injured like this, okay, And there's no
way to say any otherwise, you know that would not
have happened. So the responsibility for the injuries, and if
(12:47):
they die eventually, that goes on his account as well.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Dave, that's such an interesting thing. The first time I
heard that explain to me, it makes perfectly good sense.
It's just you can die many years later and the guy,
he might already be dead, but you know it's still
a murder and he's responsible. I want to get to
one thing very quickly because when this story was first
(13:11):
brought to me, and I actually checked my email on
this just a few minutes ago, it was after the
first murders or the first murderer of a firefighter, because
it happened in July of twenty twenty three. Joe and
I remember the email came in and we were in
a period with the show where we had a little
bit of time to chill it with summertime and looking
(13:35):
over some of the stories. This one came across my
desk and it was when two firefighters on July twelfth
of twenty twenty three, Jordan Melton and Jamal Jones. They
were doing their routine maintenance okay at Station nine, which
is twenty seventh Street North in Norwood, which is an
(13:56):
area of Birmingham, and while they were working, a man
they believe is Damian McDaniel, who we're actually talking about today,
entered the station through an open bay door that they
would leave this door open. Talk about a community. They
left this door to the fire station open, Joe, because
they lived in an area that had a number of
(14:16):
elderly citizens, not always in the great health, and they
wanted them to have a place to go to have
their blood sugar check, to have their pulse, their heart rate,
things like that. And every day people would come by
and it saved them a trip to the doctor or
an ambulance ride to the hospital or they just the
things we do not think about that fire rescue people
(14:37):
do on a daily basis really does restore your faith
in mankind.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
And you know how I feel about firefighters. I've made
this perfectly clear. And let me say this again. Yeah, cops,
I get you know. You can say and that make
a big deal out of community policing and all these
sorts of things. Firefighters have been doing community work for
years and years, and that's one of the most attractive
(15:04):
things about the fire service is that they actually have
a house that is in the neighborhood. They refer to
it as the firehouse. Now, I'm not saying that they've
got a soup kitchen there, but if you're coming in
there and you're distressed there it's what's referred to as
a helping profession. And the fact that these two guys
(15:25):
had the bay doors open. And the one thing about
firefighters is I'm reminded of a fire station I used
to go to in Atlanta every now and then, and
I'd become friends the scroup of firefighters, and I'd go
by and eat some of the best food in the world,
by the way, and they made a big deal out
of cooking. The only thing is you either had to
(15:46):
bring something or you had to clean up afterwards, and
so I always volunteer to clean up. I didn't care
because food was so good. But you can come and go.
Did you let me throw out? Another interesting point about
firefighters dave. In most states, if you kill a firefighter
while they are on duty. Did you know that that's
(16:07):
an automatic capital offense.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
No, didn't know yet, Glad it is.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah, it's and in some states, if you kill a
teacher while they are at work, it's an automatic capital offense. So,
you know, he's rolled up on both of these guys,
who I can only imagine. You know, the thing that
they do. They love to wash those trucks. They love
to roll hoses. That's one of the things that they do.
(16:33):
They're pulling preventative maintenance. They got there. They're not walking
around with weapons on their on their hips. You know,
they're in there cleaning and keeping the bay clean and
keeping their keeping their units clean and all that sort
of thing. And this wild man walks in and for
no reason whatsoever, shoots both of these guys. It's it's
(16:53):
inexplicable day.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
He walks through the open bay door and opens fire.
They had no reason to suspect that that was going
to happen on that day. And the thing that gets
you really right in the heart is that Jordan Melton.
You know, he had only been on the job a year.
He was still he had just graduated from the recruit academy.
(17:17):
This is something that he was doing because he had
had passion for it and wanted to do it. And
he's still a rookie. He'd been with Birmingham Fire and
Rescue just about a year in time to you know,
go through the academy. I mean, it boggles my mind.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
He probably after a year, he'd probably just gotten off probation.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Are yes, and five days, five days after Damien McDaniel
allegedly walked into the bay for we still don't have
a reason, Joe and he died. Jordan died five days
Jordan Melton died five days after the shooting. Jamal Jones
was injured. But I just it still crushes your soul
(17:57):
to a degree when you think of guys who start
their day thinking of what they can do to help,
what they can do to make the world a better place,
and for no reason somebody comes in and opens fire.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Yeah, and looking at this case and cases in their totality,
now we know that with the injuries and subsequent death
of this young firefighter, this was only the beginning of
a reign of terror that dropped on the city of Burning.
(18:33):
Now fourteen dead and fourteen months Dave, Yeah, and I
(18:54):
have to say that we're going to talk about this more.
It's it's rather complex because we've got two real seminal
events here that occurred on separate nights. There are other
people that have been injured along the way, and looking
at it from an investigative perspective, I'm thinking what in
(19:20):
the world was going through the investigator's minds, because you know,
Birmingham it's I guess what would you classified as? Would
you say that it's kind of a mid size city
relative population. You think about the highway and.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
The metro area, and you didn't get the the metro
is you know, I guess a million people, and then
you include the what we just called the TSA, the
total surveyed area when you get into radio ratings, and
you know, I write it beyond that. But yeah, I mean,
you're talking about a metropolitan area that probably is in
the fifty eight in the country, you know, fifty to
fifty five to sixty some were ranking in there. Just
(19:58):
your mid size metropol an area with all the things
you'd expect. We've got legendary Birmingham Barons, you know, and
they play at the legendary rick Wood Field, which has
been redone. There's so many things that have taken place
in Birmingham. The historical value of the city alone, you
could do. I encourage Field to study and look at
the letter written by Martin Luther King Junior from the
(20:20):
Birmingham Jail and look at all that history that's living
and breathing, and half the people that live there don't
know it because they don't. And that's what burns me,
because it's a it is a wonderful, beautiful place. And
you know, anyway we can, we can do our our
chamber of commerce, you know, commercial later. But I wanted
(20:40):
to get to what it's like, Joe. What and I
don't mean that, not like Pourian interest, but what is
it like from your perspective of a mass killing situation?
And something did strike me. The reason we don't usually
have more than one mass killing by the same person
is because they usually kill them or they are killed
(21:01):
or they are killed.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Yeah, and every now and then, every now and then
they will be subdued by the police, they'll flee and
sometimes the police catch them. But you know, many times
with those individuals, you you learn later that they've got
some kind of weird psychopathology that's going on, and they've
(21:23):
been quote unquote troubled and all this sort of thing.
They weren't in their right mind, Dave. The term paid
hitman has come up in the narrative, and so that
makes this all the more chilling. You know, when I
think paid hitman, I'm thinking about the movie Iceman. The
Iceman came out a few years ago with Michael Shannon is. Yeah,
(21:47):
it's based on a true story, and this guy killed
tons of people, but was living a normal life, was
a great father, They went to church, you know, the
whole nine yards. This is this is something. This is
a new creature that we're seeing here because it's so
(22:08):
so horrible relative to the idea. Here's what it gets me.
It's like you develop a thirst for it almost, it
would seem, or maybe your thirst is money. How much
money are you paid to take another person's life individually?
How much more so if you go in and kill
(22:31):
multiple people and is your target one person within a
mass grouping and you're just going to take everybody else out.
I can tell you from a forensics perspective, based upon
the mass shootings that I've worked over the years, which
there have been a few, it's something that you don't
(22:54):
get passed easily. I think that one of the most
difficult things is the fact that you're standing among the dead,
and that sounds kind of odd. It's not like standing
among the dead and the morgue, you know, where you've
got bodies that are on stainless steel tables they're about
to be autopsy he or you walk into the cooler
(23:16):
and there's bodies on gurnies. That's different. You're talking about
walking into a parking lot and there are dead people
to your left and to your right, or there there
is like massive pools of blood that have been left
(23:36):
behind by those that have been evacuated and they're going
to eventually die. You've got people that are still there
on seen and it's like it's like mass chaos when
you roll up. You really have to be able to
find that place in your mind and in your heart
where and I know this sounds real new ag. I
don't know how else to put it, where you can
(23:57):
kind of center yourself, where you can block out everything
because there's a lot of static because people people freak out.
Many people do that have become witnesses, as I think
they have a right to. You know, how else would
you react? I know how I would react, but you know,
you want to be as an investigator when you roll
(24:19):
up on one of these things, you want to be
that kind of calm in the storm, because your job
involves examining every bit of evidence that's there. One of
the biggest nightmares, particularly at night, I always because I
screwed up so many times. I always tell my students
is that when you're walking about in the dark and
(24:42):
maybe you pass over some of the flashlight and you
didn't notice it, and you hear a metallic tink that
kind of travels across the concrete or the asphalt, and
you just realize you kicked the shell casing that you
didn't see, or you hear something at the runch under
and the crunch on your foot. It's a nightmare because
you don't always see everything in a poorly lit area.
(25:03):
And the mass shootings that we're talking about actually took place.
You know at one place is like an illegal an
illegal club that was dispensing alcohol, and another place is
a legitimate place that was like in a strip mall right.
You have a huge group of people kind of.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Gathered out there, and you know, I'm so glad you
started this up. I mentioning that the term hit man
has been thrown around, you know, getting paid to kill somebody.
And I was looking over kind of a timeline, but
before we did this very quickly, I'm going to throw
something out there to you. When we're talking about mass
casualty event A lot of times, you know, body bags,
we focus on crime, but you know there are mass
(25:45):
casualty events that do not include guns and Ammo and
anybody doing anything. I was in once and when you
were describing the chaos unseen in a natural disaster. A
tornado hits a building and you've got the dead, the dying,
the wounded. I mean, it's a crazy scene, and you're
not in fear of somebody running around with a gun.
(26:06):
It's crazy enough in that and it just hit me
what it must be like for those in a scene
where you've got that mat that shooter. You know, it
wasn't a natural disaster, It wasn't something that just happened.
You know, it was somebody who actually grabbed a gun
and went into Trendsetter's nightclub and opened fire. But he
got warmed up. You know, we got in July of
(26:27):
twenty twenty three, going into a fire station and allegedly
killing one wounding another. Then five and a half six
months later, January twenty twenty four, Mia and Nixon or
Nickerson is actually wounded at her Mia Nixon is wounded
at her house and dies in her driveway. She's a
twenty one year old woman. Now McDaniel is tied to
(26:47):
that murder. Go a couple of months later and we're
at a UPS facility, Joe, April twenty twenty four. Okay,
so now it's the timeline's getting tighter, you know. July
twenty twenty three, January twenty twenty four. Now April twenty
twenty four, and a guy, Anthony Love Junior gets off work.
He's going through the parking lot and he gets shot
and killed right there on his way leaving work. Now
(27:11):
a couple of months later, it's one year after the
shooting at the fire station. July twenty twenty four. You're
at Trendsetters in Birmingham. It's just after eleven o'clock on
July three pm. On July thirteenth, officers respond to the
call multiple shots fired. Joe, you've heard that call go out? Yeah,
(27:36):
you know, the first responders go and you know, chances
are You're going to be in the thick of that
at some point soon.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yeah. And the way that it works most of tom
if you're an Emmy investigator or corner investigator, you're sitting
there and you have your radio on and you're on
the main channel. Are on there as a headquarters dispatch.
This is what it was in Atlanta, and you'll hear
a call that will come up, and this would have
been a call that would have gone out to the
(28:08):
every zone of precinct in the city, because you've got
multiple precincts. Most of the precincts have their own radio channel,
but they would have sent this thing out broadly. Because
if you've got a what turns out to be a
mass shooting and these things start to trickle in your ear,
all of a sudden tunes into this and you can
(28:28):
hear you can actually hear the voices changed on the radio.
It's kind of chilling. The voices change, the tenor of
the voices changed. You can tell that there's an urgency
because the first thing they're trying to do is secure
(28:49):
the scene relative to is there still an active shooter.
And then you've got people in the background that are
screaming and pain. And you've got people that were not
shot that are trying to render aid and they're screaming
as well because they don't know what the environment is safe.
(29:10):
And then people that are not used to being around
dead bodies are suddenly staring down at maybe a person
that was standing there with a drink in their hand
one moment and the next thing you know, they're bleeding
out on the ground next to you, and they eventually
die and you watch them die. So, yeah, it's a
matter chaos and what you're listening for. My radio number
(29:33):
in Atlanta used to actually be Emmy thirteen. What a
number right? And I would hear them call out. They
would say can you roll the meme? And I knew
that if I had heard that preceded by that there
had been a mass shooting event, I knew that I
was going to have to contact our affiliate drivers and say, listen,
you guys need to be in a bullpen warming up
(29:54):
because we're going to have more than We're going to
have a need for more than one vehicle to train
and support the remains that we're going to have out there.
And so you're thinking and the time to think about
this and planet is not when it happens. You have
to be exercised and prepared before this happens, and you
don't want to think that it is, but it always does,
(30:15):
and it is, and it's still chaos when you roll
up out there. Because this is the thing about it
is that an event like this, as disgusting as it
is to think about, attract spectators and there's no way
to keep them out. And you say, well, what, yeah,
oh yeah, yeah. I've actually been on scenes Dave at
(30:38):
four o'clock in the morning where I've had mothers standing
outside the tape holding a newborn or six month old
on their hip, laughing and carrying on with other new
mothers standing outside the tape watching everything that we do.
I've seen I've actually seen little kids. It's playing in
(31:00):
the dirt outside of tape where we've had shootings and
the kids are just playing. It's you know, it's normalized.
And so it's an absolutely horrible thing to bear witness
to because I'm thinking, you know, as rough as my
childhood was, I was never exposed to anything like this,
(31:22):
And you know, how is this going to impact How
does it impact an entire neighborhood? When you know that
this is happening out there and this is not something
that happens every day.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Right now, Joe, something that catches my attention on this one. Now,
we kind of broke it down as to how we
got to this point a year after the very first
shooting involving Damien McDaniel, but the third. But in this
particular case, a birthday party or something was going on
inside the club, trendsetters and a disagreement, scuttle whatever you
(31:52):
want to call it. Something happened inside that club, and
the shooting was done from the outside. They officers found
a thirty nine year old man on the street or
Stevie McGee I think it was his name. Anyway, they
find him or her is Steve. I don't know if
Stevie's a man or a woman. I apologize for that anyway,
(32:15):
thirty nine year old is found on the sidewalk outside
the club and when they it pronounced dead, they go
inside the club and they find more dead bodies. Damian
mcg is still Damien McDaniel is still in the middle
of this. Now, there's other people involved in the shooting
(32:37):
as well, but Damien McDaniel, how does he go from
being the suspect for killing at the fire department and
then on the scene of a twenty one year old
woman at her house, and then a ups driver and
now a mass casualty event at a nightclub drive by shooting,
picking off whoever happens. If you're not going to be
(33:00):
able to pick people to shoot when you're out on
the street, Joe shooting into a building, it's just it'shooting
whoever you can.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Yeah, and it's a that's what makes this particularly evil
in my estimation, at least.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
I'm with you. That's what I was trying to figure out.
I mean, not like any murder is better than another.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
But no, no, but you have to contextualize it.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah, you're tying to be able to take to shoot
into a building with a bunch of people at a
birthday party.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Yeah, you're right. And when you say birthday party, you're
going to have all manner of people that are there.
You might have people that I don't know that like
to drink and party, and you might have other people
there that just want to come by, and a well
wisher you know that just says I'm going to slide
by tonight and just tell my man, you know, happy Birthday,
and to randomize it like this. One of the things
(33:49):
you're looking at as well is if the shooting starts
outside and it's passing through the wall or through the door,
this is going to calm implicate the forensics in many ways.
Did you know that when if you've got someone in
is standing like immediately adjacent to what we call an
intermediary target, and that round passes through that wall, whether
(34:17):
it's a press board or if it's some kind of
external siding, it goes through insulation, then it passes through
dry wall. A lot of that stuff that's in the
wall depends upon where the individual is relative to where
the bullet actually enters the room. The physical space is
(34:38):
carrying a lot of that stuff with it. First off,
the bullet's going to be deformed, so it's going to
be real hard to get rifling off the bullet, and
a lot of that other stuff fragments and becomes almost
like shrapnel. I've seen many cases where I've seen bits
of particle board buried into people's bodies, where there has
been multiple rounds that have been popped off, And you'll
(35:02):
see this over and over again, and so it makes
us even more complex then to pull the trajectories that
you're going to have to try to understand. Like if
we're pulling trajectories at a scene and you have an
external shooter. You've got a shooter that is outside of
the building and they're firing a weapon into that building.
(35:27):
We used to use trajectory rods, but now which are
these static rods that you can place through a hole
and I'll give you an idea of directionality of the bullet,
the pitch of the bullet. Did it move from right
to left, left to right, that sort of thing. But
now we use lasers, and so you'll see these kind
of colored lasers too. Most common are generally green and red.
(35:50):
And if you can pass those through a defect in
the wall, you can track that back to the point
of origin where the individual was shooting from perhaps, and
then that trajectory line will pass through where the person
was physically standing or stooped when they were shot. Now
they might not they're obviously if they were standing, they're
not going to be in the same position. But it'll
(36:11):
give you an idea forensically as to the position of
the individual when they were when the bullet struck them. Initially,
you know where it marries up with that person's body. Now,
if they're shot and they run away, it's not going
to be it's not going to provide as much actual information.
(36:33):
But if they drop where they were shot, you can say, okay, well,
based upon this line of trajectory and get idea, this
individual's positioned in this location when the shooting started, and
where is the round anatomically in the body. Was it
like an immediate death where they're struck in the mid chest,
where they're struck in the head, they struck in the
(36:55):
lower back where maybe they didn't die immediately they just
laid their blood out, or with somebody shot here and
they were like shot in the shoulder and then they
went for cover after that. It gets very very complex,
and that's why scenes like this day they take hours
upon hours to work. You know, you don't think because
(37:17):
for everybody that is there, Okay, just let me break
this down for you and our friends, for everybody that
is there, think of it this way. Just like everybody
has their own name, each one of these bodies is
an individual case. Okay, all right, So this isn't just
(37:40):
one case. If you've got multiple individuals that are shot
in one location. Yeah, you got same address. But for
every person that is either wounded or killed, they have
an individual case number that is placed with them. Well
why is that important, Well, it's important. For one, it
helps us identify that specific individual and we will work
(38:07):
that case. Let's just say it's case number twenty five
zero zero zero one, first case of the year. Well,
lying next to them a zero zero zero two and
then zero zero zero three. So these are separately jacketed
and so you work that case individually, and it's going
to take more than one of you to do this.
(38:28):
Most of the time, with a mass shooting, you have
to break it down into teams. Ideally, and we did
this with a bucket shooting in Atlanta all those years ago.
We had three person teams that went in and worked
each body. So you'd have an em investigator, homicide detective,
and a forensic tech. Said, one person examining the body,
(38:48):
one person doing the periphery of the body, and then
you had another person documenting the body. And that's for
every it's that complex. And then you'll have a lead
investigator with the police department that will have to combine
all of these jackets. Okay of information each one of
these case files with an individual case number. It gets
(39:11):
so very complex. The complexity continues on when these people
are the deceased, at least eventually wind up wind up
at the morgue, because you handle each one of these
bodies individually and you work your way through it, and
(39:31):
it can be a nightmare at the morgue, say the
next day where you have a mass shooting. I've been
in a morgue where we've had mass shootings before where
we had seven people that were all killed in one event. Well,
they're lined up. You still have other cases that you
have to do, but these bodies are probably going to
take the numbers at the head of the line. Each
(39:52):
body has to be x rayed, each one of their
injuries has to be appreciated, their clothing has to be collected,
look for trace evidence, everything that is involved, and so
it's stacked. As you can imagine, it's like trying to
lane land planes and stormy weather and you're working each
individual case and you have to make sure that you
(40:12):
have the same day, that you have the same precision
on each one of these cases as you would if
it was a single homicide that you happened to catch
that day and that's the only homicide you had, so
and you get tired. I mean, it is physically draining
to have to do these, so you really have to
be on your p's and q's working your way through it.
(40:34):
What's fascinating about this is with this perpetrator, Dave, he
has literally been the trigger mechanism, literally and figuratively for
multiple of these events. Think about that, all of our friends,
(40:56):
think about that. For every time one of these rounds
slammed into one of our fellow citizens. A case number
is generated, forensics are generated, a case has started, a
case is investigated, a subject is charged, A subject will
(41:17):
eventually go to court, and we'll have a name. We'll
have a name for that individual as they stand before
the court and answer for what they have done. Dave,
(41:42):
you just reminded me of something that is again unique
to this case. I think. I think it's unique in
the sense of the numbers that we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Shocking is what it actually is.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Joe, Yeah, I guess, I guess. Yeah, shocking is probably
more active.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
I didn't think that was possible anymore. But what you
were talking about in document, I'm not the only person
who's going to say this show just didn't occur to
me what had to be generated during the course of
investigating a mass shooting, you know, where you're dealing with
multiple people wounded but are injured and dead in the
case of trendsetters in Birmingham, after the scene, you've got
(42:23):
you know, you have the dead on the floor and
what have you got the investigation going on, but and
there were people they were triaging there wounded individuals. Eleven
people that night went to UAB, which is a hospital
in Birmingham, University of Alabama, Birmingham, and they eleven people
went to the hospital with injuries afterwards that didn't go
(42:46):
through the police or anybody else at the scene. They
came on their own. And of those eleven victims, one
of those, a twenty four year old man, actually died
of his injuries at UAB after all of this had
gone on.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
That's yeah, it really is the volume, the volume that
you're talking about. You talk about total chaos because when
you have these individuals. First off, if you're UAB, which
is arguably I guess the largest trauma center maybe in
(43:25):
the state of Alabama, I would imagine it's a massive
teaching hospital. By the way, one of the finest in
the country. It's got a long standing history. You've got
these other eleven that have rolled in now knowing that
UAB is the trauma center to go to those individuals
(43:45):
that would have been tree edged at the scene and
thrown into ambulances and taken quickly to the hospital. They're
already filling up all the bays. Just think about everybody
in the sound of my voice right now. Just think
about what it's like if you've ever had to go
to emergency room on a busy night, and multiply that
by a factor of about one hundred. If you've got,
(44:07):
like I don't know, if you think that you've got
an uttep tummy and you decide to go to the
emergency room and you roll in there and you're writhing
in pain on a gurney, you're going to have taken
number and wait. That's what it comes down to. And
they might not get to you for hours upon hours
upon hours. As a matter of fact, they might say, look,
(44:28):
you're going to be better served by getting in your
car and going somewhere else because everything is going to
be thrown Because you've got people that have got gaping
defects in their body that are losing blood. You've got
people that have fractured bones. Oh, by the way, not
to mention, you've got people that got perforated organs, so
they're having to be evaluated and get them up to
(44:51):
a surgical suite. And then they've got to call in
all the trauma surgeons and all of the residents that
work for the trauma surgeons. Just to hand. It is
a war zone at this point time. Oh and by
the way, we've got eleven more people from the trend
Centers event that happened to come in what they refer
to as ambulatory They would walk in on their own
(45:14):
or maybe a friend drug them in. You're not bringing
them in by ambulance, so you're stacking. You're stacking more
on top. So it's a real stressor on the entire system.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Something I can imagine.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
They don't have more people that have died. It's kind
of amazing, Dave.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
You know, I've just shocked. I did not know what
all went into And now I'm now taking this a
little bit further on, and I'm thinking from a professional standpoint, Joe,
a lot of the men and women working in law
enforcement in the Medical Examiner's office seeing the number of
deaths like this, and you know, we have the trendsetters event,
(45:50):
and then you've got the people coming in after. But
you know, right on the heels of that Joe there
there were another group of murders that took place that
are going to be attributed to Damian McDaniel and others,
but in particular, on September the nineteenth, twenty twenty four,
a woman Deanentrey Deontrante to Nae Brown. They say she
(46:14):
was an innocent bystander in what amounted to a shooting
that took place outside or inside the six h four
bar and lounge. It was just this is a one off,
and boy, I feel like I'm I'm really being dismissive
and I'm not trying to point out what was going
on because again, these are all attributed to the same
person now, and by the way, there are also other
(46:36):
people that are joining McDaniel on different events of these.
And on September nineteenth, you've got ms Brown. On September
twenty first, two days after that murder outside of the
Hush Lounge, that another mass shooting event. You've got four
(46:57):
killed and seventeen others injured. This is a bar in
the Five Points area of Birmingham. This is an area
where there's a lot of foot traffic. It's a very
busy place, especially at night. It is a happening place.
And to have a mass casualty event, a mass shooting
event there Joe on the heels of what they've already seen.
(47:19):
I'm just thinking, if you're working in law enforcement and
going on these calls, do y'all talk amongst yourselves with
other professionals and discuss what's going on and say, what's
happening here?
Speaker 1 (47:34):
Yeah, And it's really easy to get caught up in
all the peripheral stuff that goes along, but you have
to draw your focus back to what's the most important thing,
and that is try to understand who are what you're
dealing with here are you? Have these people been targeted
because they're attending They're a member of some group, you know,
(47:57):
which doesn't seem likely because it seems on its face
it seems rather randomized. You've got people that are out
in the evening, but there are a lot of people
that are out in the evening. It seems to me
that this is it has a bit of organization to
it because if we go back to this premise that
(48:21):
he has been hired as a hitman, if he goes
in and creates as much chaos as he possibly can,
it sounds like something I have a movie. He can
target the one person that maybe he's being paid to
kill allegedly and creates a tremendous amount of chaos while
they're doing it. The target doesn't get away, and he
(48:44):
can blend in while he's doing it. Because with chaos,
it's amazing. When you go to take statements from people
at events like this, or I hate to say events
incidents like this, you'll get multiple descriptions of a perpetrator.
They won't all be the same. And the thing about
(49:05):
it is people are seeing it from different perspectives. Some
people are hearing things and they're not seeing anything, and
hearing sometimes can be just as good as seeing. If
you've got your head down and your face is buried,
your eyes are not turned, you're trying to avert, but
you hear them say something, maybe you pick up on
a certain word that they might use, some kind of
(49:26):
command that they might use, or if you're laying there
in the dirt and your face down you hear them
say they might call out somebody's name specifically, and that
gives you an indication of who the target was. Because
in a big group like this, how are you going
to know who's there? And are you there to specifically
identify somebody and you're going to take them out? But
(49:48):
so many of these things are randomized, Dave, that you
go all the way back to the firefighters, those two
unfortunate young men that were shot in the firehouse, one
of which died and the others survived. What you know,
it's it's almost like throwing a brick through a stained
glass window. Why are you going to do that? You know?
(50:10):
It just it doesn't make sense at all, unless again
it's a warm up act. And if if that's not
the warm up act, I want to know how far
in his past has he been committing violent crimes as well, Dave,
when this thing finally goes to trial, First off, it
is going to be a capital murder case. I can
(50:32):
you can take that to the bank. That's going to happen,
and he is going to be looking almost certainly at
the death penalty. Uh, They're they're going to make that happen.
I would would imagine the prosecutors the amount of forensic
evidence in this case. To say that it's a tidal
(50:56):
wave is an understatement because just like I mentioned, for
every person that was shot by this guy, there will
be ballistics, there's going to be forensic pathology that's going
to come into this. They're going to talk about things
like how long did they live, did they suffer? And
(51:18):
then you're going to have all of these people that
are also witnesses that have been injured that are going
to get up on the stand and they're going to
talk about what happened that night, and they're going to
talk about they're going to say the I can guarantee you,
I can see it come with prosecutors going to say, now,
if you don't mind me asking, sir, can he tell
us that night, the night of the shooting, where were
(51:40):
you shot? Specifically? Yeah, I was shot in my stomach twice.
And certain may ask how many surgeries that you have
to go through? I don't know, two three? How long
were you in the hospital? Two weeks? Three weeks? And
have you fully recovered? They be like this the rest
(52:00):
of my life. They're going to hear that in coordinate
over and over and over and over again. It's hard
to take the measure of the damage that has come
about at the hands of this individual. We're going to
stay on this case, watch it very very closely, and
(52:22):
keep everyone up to speed on it because this is
not going to be over with anytime soon. I'm going
to be interested to see if he has in fact
been involved in any other shootings that he could be
credited with, any other deaths, any other assaults. And the
big mystery here that the cops have not really let
(52:43):
onto a lot about at this point in time is
if he is a hit man, who is it that
hired him, what was their motivation, and where did he
get the weapons to perpetrate these crimes. I'm Joseph Scott
Morgan and this is Body Fast
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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