A body was found near the site of a Kentucky highway shooting that left five people seriously injured this month, authorities said Wednesday, the latest development in a search for the suspect that has stretched into a second week and set the local community on edge.
Detectives are working to confirm the identity of the body, according to a social media post from the Kentucky State Police, which cited a statement from Trooper Scottie Pennington, an officer in London, Kentucky.
It was not immediately clear whether the discovery was related to the shooting.
Police have identified the suspect in the shooting as Joseph A Couch (32). They said that on September 7th, Couch perched on a cliff overlooking Interstate 75 about 8 miles north of London and opened fire. One of the wounded was shot in the face, and another was shot in the chest. A dozen vehicles were riddled with gunfire.
According to a police affidavit in support of arrest warrants, Couch purchased an AR-15-style rifle and 1,000 rounds of ammunition just hours before the shooting. He then sent a series of alarming text messages, including one that read: “I’m going to kill a lot of people. Well try at least.”
Couch has been charged with five counts of attempted murder and five counts of first-degree assault.
The search, which on Wednesday stretched into its 12th day, began shortly after the shooting in a remote wooded area near London, a city of about 8,000 people located roughly an hour south of Lexington. Authorities deployed dozens of officers, along with search dogs, a helicopter and a drone equipped with an infrared scanner. The search was complicated by the area’s difficult and remote terrain, authorities said, which includes caves, rocky slopes and dense vegetation.
A couple who have been looking for the suspect and documenting their multiday search in the Kentucky backwoods on YouTube appeared to find deteriorating human remains on Wednesday afternoon.
During a 30-minute live-stream, the couple, Shelia and Fred McCoy, followed swarming vultures to a site with what appeared to be a body. In an interview with The New York Times, Fred McCoy, a retired police chief for the Hustonville Police Department, said that the body was about a mile or two northwest of the highway exit where the shooting occurred. When McCoy started shouting, police, who were already searching the area nearby, arrived at the scene quickly, he said.
A spokesperson for the county sheriff’s office that includes London did not immediately respond to a message asking whether the couple had assisted in the discovery of the body.
The fact that the suspect remained at large left the community in London anxious. Police warned residents to lock their doors and keep their porch lights on at night. Several schools cancelled classes. Football games were called off at some high schools, and police stepped up their presence at others.
Couch served in the Army Reserve as a combat engineer from 2013 to 2019 but was never deployed. According to court records, he has several charges on his record and was arrested most recently in February. In that incident, he was charged with terroristic threatening after coming outside with a rifle and threatening to kill a man and his dog following a confrontation about Couch throwing a rock at the animal. – The New York Times