YouTube live streamers reportedly found a body in the woods near I-75 in Kentucky, the same highway that alleged shooter Joseph Couch sent a volley of bullets toward 11 days ago, wounding five people and sparking a statewide manhunt.
Kentucky State Police confirmed Wednesday afternoon that a body had been located “in the vicinity of Exit 49 in Laurel County,” and that investigators were working to confirm the identity.
The body had seemingly first been discovered by live streamers from Hatfield McCoy Museum Adventures, who had taken a break from their usual activities documenting the famous Hatfield-McCoy feud to help in the search for Couch.
A 30-minute live stream posted on Wednesday followed a man and a woman as they trekked through the woods near Exit 49 on I-75. Near the end of the video, they said they had started to pick up on the smell of decaying flesh.
A few moments later, the man, hidden behind some trees, can be heard yelling, “Got him! Here he is!” The video comes to an end about 30 seconds later.
Police had been combing Daniel Boone National Forest for nearly two weeks since the apparently random shooting on the evening of Sept. 7, WKYT reported.
Police almost immediately named Joseph Couch, 32, as a person of interest and then a suspect, telling people to “consider [him] armed and dangerous.” They charged him with five counts of attempted murder.
That morning he had bought about 1,000 rounds of ammunition, firing 20 to 30 of them hours later from a perch near exit 49. A dozen vehicles were hit.
Authorities found his vehicle on a service road near the scene and a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle nearby. But they continued to comb the rugged woods near London, about 75 miles south of Lexington, scouring 28,000 acres over the 11 days.
Couch had texted someone, identified by some media outlets as his ex-wife, about a half hour before the shootings, saying he was “going to kill a lot of people. Well, try at least,” authorities said at the time.
He indicated he planned to do the same to himself when he was done.
With News Wire Services
