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Virginia shooter caught with licence plate scanner

The suspect in the tragic double murder in Virginia on Wednesday was located by police using the same licence plate scanner technology police in Greater Sudbury began using today. According to tweets from U.S.
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Journalists Allison Parker and Adam Ward died Aug. 26 when a man walked up to them during a live hit around 6:45 a.m. and opened fire. Photo: Twitter

The suspect in the tragic double murder in Virginia on Wednesday was located by police using the same licence plate scanner technology police in Greater Sudbury began using today.

According to tweets from U.S. TV station WUSA9, Virginia State Trooper Pam Neff ID'd the vehicle that suspected shooter Bryce Williams was driving thanks to the rear camera on the scanner.

“License plate reader on back of trooper's car showed her that #WDBJ shooting suspect had just passed,” the station tweeted this afternoon.

“VSP Trooper Pam Neff says license plate reader told her @WDBJ7 suspect had just gone by. She got him.”

Journalists Allison Parker and Adam Ward died Wednesday when Williams walked up to them during a live hit around 6:45 a.m. and opened fire. He took responsibility for the killings on social media and posted a point-of-view video of the shootings.

Williams, whose legal name was Vester Flanagan, was a former reporter at WDBJ who had been fired because of disturbing behaviour. He had lost TV jobs at other stations in the southern U.S. for similar reasons. He posted the video of the murders on Twitter and tweeted about the tragedy before he shot himself as police closed in on his vehicle.

He later died in hospital.

The automatic licence plate scanner that was unveiled in Sudbury on Wednesday costs about $45,000 per vehicle, and will operate in one police car for the next year. It can scan 3,500 plates an hour using three cameras — one each on the back and front, while one on the side scans parked cars as officers patrol an area.

Police say it will be used for such things as to locate suspended drivers, unsafe vehicles and expired plate registrations, as well as for Amber Alerts for missing children and emergency manhunts such as the one that took place in the U.S. on Wednesday.

In its first few hours of operation, Sudbury police charged more than a dozen people with offences, including four suspended drivers, one person with no insurance and another driving an unsafe vehicle.

 

It's a one-year pilot project, after which police will consider expanding it to more vehicles, depending on its effectiveness and costs.