Last Updated on 10/09/2024 by Arun jain
The man had doubts Highway shooting in Kentucky Less than 30 minutes after he shot and wounded five people on Interstate 75, he sent a text message vowing to “kill a lot of people,” authorities said in an arrest warrant.
“I will kill many people. Well, at least try,” Joseph Couch, 32, wrote in a text message, according to a warrant affidavit filed in court. In a separate text message, Couch wrote, “I’m going to kill myself later,” the affidavit says.
The Lexington Herald-Leader identified the woman who sent the coach the text messages as his ex-wife. The affidavit itself does not describe the relationship between the coach and the woman who received the texts.
An affidavit written by Capt. Richard Dalrymple of the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office said that before officers received the first report of a shooting Saturday at about 5:30 p.m., a dispatcher in Laurel County received a call from a woman who told them there had been a shooting at a couch. Sent her text messages at 5:03 p.m
In response to that call, police started a tracker on Couch’s cellphone but the location was not found until 6:53 p.m., about 90 minutes after the highway shooting, the affidavit states.
In an affidavit obtained by CBS News, Couch is charged with five counts each of felony attempted murder and first-degree assault.
On Sunday, law enforcement officers searched the area near where Koch’s vehicle was found, overlooking I-75. There, they found a green army-style duffel bag, ammunition and numerous spent shell casings, the affidavit says. A short distance away, they found a Colt AR-15 rifle, loaded with ammunition and some extra magazines. The duffel bag had “Sof” handwritten in black marker.
The inventors have been Combing thousands of acres A small town of about 8,000 people about 75 miles south of Lexington, in a rugged, hilly area near London.
State Police Master Trooper Scotty Pennington, a spokesman for the London Post, said troopers were being brought in from across the state to help with the search, which focused on a remote area about 8 miles north of London. He described the extensive search area as a “walk in the jungle”, requiring a scythe to cut through the bushes.
“We have a cliff bed. We have sinkholes. We have caves,” Pennington said Monday. “We have culverts from under the interstate. We have creeks and rivers and dense brush.”
Authorities vowed to continue their relentless pursuit into the densely wooded area as local residents worried where the shooter might come next.
“We’re not going to quit until we get our hands on him,” Laurel County Sheriff John Root said.
CBS Lexington, Kentucky affiliate WKYT-TV says A $15,000 reward has been offered for information leading to Couch’s arrest, with $5,000 from the Kentucky State Police and $10,000 from a private donor.
The victim tells her story
Rebecca Puryear told the Lexington Herald-Leader she’s thankful to be alive after she was shot in the chest in her right arm. She was coming home from dinner at Olive Garden with her husband and 4-year-old son.
Another bullet hit the door of his Toyota Camry and shattered it, also injuring his left arm.
“I looked at my husband and said, ‘What was that?’ He said it was a gunshot. I said, ‘Oh God!’ ” Puryear, 28, told the newspaper.
She was “bleeding,” but her husband urged her to keep driving. She pulled over a mile up the road and her husband told her to take off her shirt and press it on the wound while he called 911.
Puryear is out of hospital but will undergo surgery at a later date. .
“This man was out to kill, and he almost did,” Puryear said, “You couldn’t be here in the blink of an eye. I don’t want anybody else’s family to go through this.
Additional precautions as the search continues
Meanwhile, school districts across a large swath of southeastern Kentucky were closed Monday as the coach search stretched into a third day.
Donna Hess, who lives 10 miles from the shooting scene, agrees with the decision to close the schools.
“I’m afraid he’s going to try to hijack the bus and take the kids hostage,” said Hess, a first-grader and preschooler. “I worry about everyone because they don’t know where he is. … We don’t know what he’s capable of right now.”
Koch most recently lived in Woodbine, a small community about 20 miles south of the shooting scene. An employee at Center Target Firearms, a gun store in London, informed authorities that Couch had purchased an AR-15 and 1,000 rounds of ammunition hours before the shooting, the affidavit said.
Gun store manager Joe Arnold declined to comment Monday. He said he did not want to interfere with the investigation.
“We would like him to be found and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Arnold told The Associated Press.
Kentucky’s gun laws are under scrutiny
Kentucky has few rules for buying and carrying guns in public. According to a report by the State’s gun laws are “among the worst in the country”. Everytown for Gun SafetyA gun safety nonprofit group.
Kentucky lawmakers in 2019 repealed a law that required a permit to carry a concealed weapon. The state also does not require a background check at the time of purchase.
Authorities in Kentucky said Monday that Couch was in the Army Reserves and not the National Guard, as officials had initially indicated. Couch served as a combat engineer from 2013 to 2019, the US Army said in a statement. He was a private when he left and had no deployments.
Pennington said Monday that military experience does not make a coach a trained survivalist, and the plan is to wear the coach down.
“How long can you really last?” Pennington said. “We’re hoping it just pops out.”
Authorities said Couch fired 20 to 30 rounds, striking 12 vehicles on the interstate Saturday.
Christina DiNoto, who witnessed the shooting while driving, said Monday that the search weighed heavily on her mind.
“Knowing that he’s still at large — it makes me nervous, to be honest,” DiNoto said.
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