A man accused of shooting at a state police trooper rushing to the scene of a triple slaying has been charged in the murders of an eastern Kentucky couple and their adult son, police said Thursday.
Investigators connected the slayings to the attack on the trooper after the suspect, Paul Douglas Sizemore, was captured Wednesday.
Information gathered from the initial investigation led police to charge Sizemore with three murder counts, said Kentucky State Police Master Trooper Jody Sims. Sizemore was questioned by police after his capture while walking down the middle of a road.
Sizemore, 52, also is charged with attempted murder of a police officer. He fled on foot Monday evening after allegedly ramming his car into a police cruiser and shooting at the trooper, state police said. The trooper, Ethan Lewis, wasn’t injured.
Deputies soon discovered the bodies, but Sizemore wasn’t found until two days later. He was unarmed and put up no resistance when officers found him walking on a road a few miles (kilometers) from where the slayings occurred. He complained of his feet hurting from exposure to cold weather. His capture ended a search on foot and by air in a heavily wooded, hilly area of eastern Kentucky.
Sizemore, now held in the Leslie County Detention Center, was charged in the slayings of 64-year-old Larry Bowling, his 61-year-old wife, Norma, and their 38-year-old son, Chad Bowling. The couple’s bodies were found Monday evening in their home, and their son was found dead outside a neighboring home in the Appalachian community of Yeaddiss. All three had been shot, police said.
County Coroner Greg Walker told the Lexington Herald-Leader that Larry Bowling had worked as a coal-mine foreman, and that he and his wife were “just fine citizens.”
