Four friends of the serial shootings suspect said they feel sorry for the victims, but that they vow to stand by their friend, NewsChannel 4's Holly Hollingsworth reported.
The four Grove City High School graduates grew up with Charles A. McCoy Jr. One even chose him to be the best man at his wedding.
"They're acting like he didn't have no friends and he was a loner," Adam Lape said. "He has hundreds of friends. There's hundreds of people that love him."
McCoy, 28, was taken into custody Wednesday morning and arrested unharmed at the Budget Suites Motel in Las Vegas, located off the Las Vegas Strip. He was charged Monday night with felonious assault out of a shooting incident Dec. 15 on Brown Road in South Columbus. The task force investigating the serial shootings said Monday that McCoy was the prime suspect in the shootings that have taken place in Central Ohio over the last 10 months.
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McCoy is expected to allow his extradition back to Franklin County Friday. He could then fly back to Columbus.
The friends said Thursday night that the McCoy they know was not aggressive or troubled, but never really talked about any particular ambitions in life.
They said dealing with the shock of the announcement that McCoy is a suspect in the series of 24 shootings in Columbus, including one that killed a 62-year-old woman on Nov. 25, has not been easy.
"Seeing his face every day, listening to everybody that didn't know him talk about him," Josh Riley said. "Like, you hear what his neighbors said. A lot of people don't talk to their neighbors. That doesn't mean they're a bad person."
Some of McCoy's neighbors said he kept to himself, but others said he had a temper. Others said they didn't feel comfortable around him.
McCoy's friends are still trying to make sense of the entire situation.
"I've been running it through my mind over and over again, and I've been talking to these guys about it, and I just don't know," Ron Petty said. "I mean, Charles is not that type of person."
"I have never heard of Charles even firing a gun before," Riley said. "We're the ones, me and a few of our other friends, we hunt and stuff. I've never heard of him firing a gun."
Steve Trout said there is another disturbing side to the serial shootings story.
"Once he killed somebody, you know, and kept doing it," Trout said. "That's what's the worst. He could have kept killing people, and kept killing people."
Trout said McCoy has watched his children on occasion. Would he let him do it again?
"Yeah," Trout said. "I mean, as crazy as that sounds. It's just not Charles. Obviously, you know, I mean, we'd sit down and talk, you know, and ... I think that's what he really needed, for a long time."
The friends Hollingsworth talked to said they most want to know why he didn't call them if he was so troubled and needed help.
More of this interview can be seen at 7 p.m. Sunday on "Dateline NBC."
Watch NewsChannel 4 and refresh nbc4columbus.com for continuing coverage.
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