Amateur bounty hunter couple key to finding body believed to be Kentucky highway shooting suspect
Days after a shooter attacked an interstate and disappeared, leaving a Kentucky community scared and on guard, Fred and Sheila McCoy decided to lace up their boots for the first time in a long time and spend days in rugged terrain searching until, finally, they found a body.
Kentucky State Police credited Fred and Sheila McCoy, who typically spend their retired days creating YouTube videos about the Hatfield-McCoy feud, with helping investigators find what they believe are the remains of Joseph Couch. Couch, 32, is suspected of firing randomly at vehicles on Interstate 75 on Sept. 7, wounding five people. The suspect wrote in a text message, "I'm going to kill a lot of people. Well try at least," according to an affidavit for his arrest obtained by CBS News. All five victims were expected to survive the shooting.
The person believed to be Couch died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said Kentucky's Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. William Ralston. An autopsy performed on Thursday "revealed the cause of death to be a wound consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot to the head," Ralston said in a statement. A weapon was found with the body, police said. A soft tissue DNA test was inconclusive on the identification of the body, and testing on the bones could take up to two days, Ralston said. A toxicology test is also pending.
Teams of local, state and federal law enforcement had searched tens of thousands of acres of woods since the shooting. Authorities warned residents to be extra vigilant and some schools temporarily shifted to virtual learning. Laurel County Public Schools turned to remove learning for three days, before resuming in-person learning.
"For one week we turned into bounty hunters," Fred McCoy told The Associated Press on Thursday. "The more we was watching the news and saw lockdowns and school closings, the more we were compelled to search for him."
The discovery of the remains calmed fears in the eastern Kentucky community of London, just a few miles from where the shooter perched above the highway and opened fire with an AR-15. State police said Wednesday night that the McCoys would receive a $25,000 reward for the find.
Once the identification is fully confirmed, it will "bring to a close a pretty scary time in that community and the surrounding communities," Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday.
Vultures circling in the air
In a 30-minute YouTube livestream Wednesday, the McCoys are filming in dense woods after they see vultures in the air, and Sheila McCoy says she can smell a foul odor.
"Oh, Lord, this is nasty. Oh, my goodness, this is gross," Sheila says while warning her husband to watch out for snakes.
At the end of the video, they discover the remains. "Hey, guys, you won't believe it, we found him, oh, my goodness gracious," Sheila McCoy says in the video.
Police were also searching the area, and the couple identified themselves to officers about 12 minutes before they found the remains. They'd also warned police and friends they'd be there, and were livestreaming on YouTube in case something went wrong, Fred McCoy said.
"We didn't know we was going to find him like that," he said. "We could've found him with a gun pointed at us."
The McCoys live a couple of counties away from where the shooter attacked. They hadn't gone on a hike in the woods in a long time - Sheila, 59, had previously had back surgery and her husband, 66, had knee surgery - but they decided after a Friday night date to help in the search, said Fred McCoy, himself a retired police officer. He said the couple has been married for 39 years.
"We were just a crippled old man and crippled old woman walking in the woods," he said Thursday in a follow-up video. Fred McCoy said he is a descendant of a Hatfield-McCoy marriage and they run a small museum related to the history of the feud.
He estimated the remains were about a mile away from where the shooter opened fire. Nearby, police found Couch's vehicle and an AR-15 last week.
The discovery of the body put nearby residents at ease after more than a week of tension with a gunman on the loose near their homes.
"I feel a huge sense of relief," said Heather Blankenship, a mother of three who lives near London. She saw the body in the McCoys' video, which has grown to nearly a half-million views in less than 24 hours, and even though her anxiety is gone and her sense of normalcy has returned, it's still sad, she said.
"I'm over here relieved that to me this monster is dead," but meanwhile, the suspect's family is grieving, Blankenship said.
Authorities said the shooter fired 20 to 30 rounds, creating chaos. The five victims survived, but some suffered serious injuries.
Authorities said Couch purchased the AR-15 weapon and about 1,000 rounds of ammunition at a London gun store hours before the shooting.
Laurel County Judge-Executive David Westerfield sensed a collective sigh of relief among residents.
"They feel like they can go back to their normal lifestyle," he said.