Couple help find body in search for Kentucky gunman
Joseph Couch
- Published
A Kentucky couple have said a "date night idea" unfolded into a multi-day bounty hunt that led them to the body of a suspected gunman.
The body is believed to be that of Joseph Couch, wanted for a shooting rampage on an interstate highway earlier this month. No formal identification has yet been made.
Police scoured through dense rural brush for 11 days in search of Couch, and offered a $35,000 (£26,000) reward for information leading to his capture.
Fred and Sheila McCoy had been live-streaming over a period of six days when they made their discovery.
"We'd seen a bunch of vultures," Mr McCoy told local TV station WKYT on Wednesday. "If somebody's dead, there's going to be vultures. Follow the vultures."
Five or six of the birds were circling the area as they approached, and the couple were quickly overpowered by the foul stench of a decomposing body.
“You won’t believe it,” Mrs McCoy can be heard saying on the YouTube livestream. “Oh my goodness gracious.”
At about the same time as the McCoys stumbled upon the body, two Kentucky state police troopers had also been drawn to the site by the smell and the sight of circling scavengers.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Laurel County Sheriff's Office said it had located a body presumed to belong to Couch.
The state medical examiner's office in Frankfort is conducting an autopsy to confirm it is him.
Authorities say Couch, 32, texted a woman before the shooting, promising: "I'm going to kill a lot of people. Well, try at least."
According to an arrest warrant, he recently bought an AR-15 assault rifle and about 1,000 rounds of ammunition.
On the evening of 7 September, Couch allegedly perched atop a cliff overlooking the Interstate 75 (I-75) in Laurel County, about nine miles (14km) from the city of London in south-eastern Kentucky, and fired bullets at a dozen vehicles before fleeing into the woods.
At least five motorists suffered injuries, with one shot in the face and another across the chest.
Responding officers shut down the highway and were able to find the suspect's vehicle abandoned near a service road off the highway's Exit 49.
Police located Couch's phone and weapon inside the car and named him later that day as the alleged gunman, but they were unable to immediately locate him in the vast, dense wilderness that surrounds I-75.
Over the following 11 days, dozens of officers fanned out across the Daniel Boone National Forest - an area larger than Los Angeles and New York City combined - with drones, dogs and helicopters.
In some cases, they had to use machetes to cut through the thick brush in remote terrain that also includes caves and sinkholes.
The manhunt sparked fear among the local community, with several school districts cancelling classes and business owners locking their doors.
The McCoys have said they joined the search both for a piece of the reward and to bring a sense of normalcy back to the community.
“You have to understand, this guy has been stressing this community out,” Mr McCoy told CNN. "Now everyone can rest."
Investigators on Wednesday said they wished they could have located Couch alive but community members could "rest much easier now that this manhunt has been concluded".
“We are very confident that this brings closure to the search for Joseph Couch,” police commissioner Phillip Burnett Jr said.
He confirmed the McCoys would receive a full reward.
According to his website, Mr McCoy has a background in law enforcement, serving with the US Marine Corps after high school and later serving as a police chief in central Kentucky.
His wife has spent nearly three decades as a long-time kindergarten teaching assistant.
Mr McCoy says he is descended from a family that found themselves in a bitter post-Civil War blood feud with the rival Hatfield family in the Appalachian Mountains.
The story has sparked books, live shows and a History Channel miniseries starring Kevin Costner.
Until recently, the McCoys ran a small museum in the city of Liberty, which they said contained the largest privately-owned collection of Hatfield and McCoy artefacts, collectibles and memorabilia.