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Photo: KSP Logo

Author: Kentucky Today

 

Kentucky State Police (KSP) have arrested one the two suspects sought in the shooting of a Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) trooper over the weekend, while the second suspect is still being sought.

The KSP says the arrest was in connection to the July 19 shooting of THP Trooper Adam Cothron in Putnam County, Tennessee. Cothron had conducted a traffic stop on Interstate-40 at mile marker 285, near the Burgess Falls exit outside Cookeville, in a vehicle occupied by two Black men.

During the traffic stop, Cothron was shot, and the subjects fled in the vehicle. Trooper Cothron was flown to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville where he is in stable condition.

Braze Rucker, a 29-year-old, Black male was identified as one of the occupants in the vehicle. The THP and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) obtained warrants for his arrest. On Sunday, KSP Troopers located and arrested Rucker inside a residence in Princeton, Kentucky, about two hours away from where the suspects’ car was recovered by law enforcement in Gallatin, Tennessee.

The THP says Rucker was a passenger in the suspect car, while the second man, who authorities say was the driver and who has not been identified other than to say he is a Black man with facial tattoos, is still at large.

Cothron’s family, in a post on social media, said the bullet is not lodged in his spine as they originally had thought, but instead is in the right scapula area, and that there is hope that his legs will fully recover.