Couple Uncovered the Kentucky Highway Shooter’s Remains After Being Bounty Hunters for a Week, They Said
Louisville, Kentucky — Days after a shooter assaulted an interstate and vanished, leaving a Kentucky neighborhood terrified and on edge, Fred and Sheila McCoy decided to lace up their boots for the first time in a long time and spent days searching in tough terrain until they discovered a body.
Kentucky State Police credited Fred and Sheila McCoy, who generally spend their retirement days creating YouTube movies about the Hatfield-McCoy rivalry, with assisting detectives in locating what they believe to be Joseph Couch’s remains. Couch, 32, is suspected of randomly shooting at cars on Interstate 75 on September 7, injuring five people.
Dr. William Ralston, Kentucky’s Chief Medical Examiner, stated that the individual thought to be Couch died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. A soft tissue DNA test was inconclusive for body identification, and bone testing might take up to two days, according to Ralston. A toxicological test is also awaiting.
Since the shooting, teams of local, state, and federal law enforcement have searched tens of thousands of acres of woodland. Authorities cautioned locals to be extra attentive, and several schools temporarily switched to virtual 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 assuaged anxieties in the eastern Kentucky city of London, just a few miles from where the shooter stood over the highway and started fire with an AR-15. State police said Wednesday night that the McCoys will receive a $25,000 prize for their discovery.
When the identification is finalized, it will “bring to a close a pretty scary time in that community and the surrounding communities,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday.
“We have every reason to believe that this is Joseph Couch,” Beshear told reporters at the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort. “But a final and determinative identification has not yet been possible.”
In a 30-minute YouTube livestream Wednesday, the McCoys are filming in dense woods after spotting vultures in the air, when Sheila McCoy claims to smell a horrible odor.
“Oh, Lord, this is disgusting. “Oh, my goodness, this is gross,” Sheila exclaims, advising her husband to keep an eye out for snakes.
At the end of the video, they find 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 investigating the area, and the pair identified themselves to officers around 12 minutes before they discovered the bodies. They had also informed police and friends that they would be present, and they were live streaming on YouTube in case anything went wrong, according to Fred McCoy.
“We didn’t know we was going to find him like that,” he told me. “We could’ve found him with a gun pointed at us.”
The McCoys live a few counties away from where the shooter struck. They hadn’t been on a trip in the woods in a long time — Sheila, 59, had previously had back surgery, and her husband, 66, had knee surgery — but after a Friday night date, they decided to help with the search, according to Fred McCoy, a former police officer.
“We were just a crippled old man and crippled old woman walking in the woods,” he told me on Thursday. Fred McCoy claims to be a descendant of the Hatfield-McCoy marriage, and they maintain a small museum dedicated to the feud’s history.
He guessed that the remains were about a mile from where the shooter opened fire. Last Monday, authorities discovered Couch’s truck as well as an AR-15 nearby.
The finding of the body relieved surrounding homeowners after more than a week of fear with a gunman on the prowl near their houses.
“I feel a huge sense of relief,” said Heather Blankenship, a mother of three living near London. She saw the body in the McCoys’ video, which has received nearly a half-million views in less than 24 hours, and while her worry has subsided and her feeling of normalcy has returned, she is still sad, she says.
“I’m over here relieved that to me this monster is dead,” Blankenship said, but the suspect’s family is still suffering.
Authorities stated the shooter shot 20 to 30 rounds, causing havoc. The five victims survived, but several were severely injured.
Authorities say Couch bought the AR-15 rifle and approximately 1,000 rounds of ammo at a London gun store hours before the shooting.
Laurel County Judge-Executive David Westerfield sensed a collective sigh of relief from the inhabitants.
“They feel like they can go back to their normal lifestyle,” he told me.