A report by US-based news media outlets WXIN and the Hill on Wednesday said 28-year-old Bryan Christopher Kohberger, the suspect in the Idaho student stabbings, had a brush with police in the US state of Indiana while he was travelling back to Pennsylvania with his father in December 2022.
The murder of the four University of Idaho students in the small town of Moscow has grabbed national and international attention. Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Kernodle’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, 20, were murdered in their sleep on November 13 and the police made their first arrest in the case on December 30.
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Kohberger, a graduate student from the Washington State University, is suspected of murdering the four students at the residence where they were living with two other students. He is also a PhD candidate in the department of criminal justice and criminology, according to news reports.
The report said that Kohberger and his father were in a white Hyundai Elantra on December 15 when Indiana police officials encountered them. Media reports earlier said that a white Hyundai Elantra was spotted in the vicinity of the residence where the four college students were murdered.
Indiana State Police and the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that they stopped Kohberger and his father twice within nine-minutes and in both cases they were left with a ‘verbal warning’. Kohberger was the driver in both instances.
He was once apprehended for following a vehicle too-closely and once for speeding. He was not issued a parking ticket in either case.
Kohberger’s father flew in from Washington to assist his son who wished to drive 2,500-miles from the state of Washington to Pennsylvania. Indiana State Police released body camera footage of the second incident and plan to send it to their Idaho counterparts to see if it would be relevant to the investigation.
The notification regarding the white Hyundai Elantra was released on December 17.
Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke, who were inside the house at the time of the murders, slept through the entire incident. The police believe that they are important to solving the murders.
There were no signs of sexual assault and the coroner said that the victims had some defensive wounds as well which means they resisted when they were attacked.
Kohberger is expected to waive extradition so he can be returned to Idaho to face charges. He faces four counts of first-degree murder and a count of felony burglary, the Hill and WXIN reported.
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