The livestreaming couple who found the body of the man who shot five people on Interstate 75 in southern Kentucky this month on Wednesday also made a video that allegedly shows the area from which the gunman fired at cars.
The video showed a view of the highway, rugged terrain including a cliff they said they should not have crossed, and two state police troopers questioning them about what they were doing.
The couple, Fred and Sheila McCoy, say they are descendants of the famous feuding Appalachian families Hatfields and McCoys, and previously dedicated a museum in Casey County to the feud.
And on Wednesday, they did what 14 law enforcement agencies could not: Streaming live video on YouTube, they found the body of 32-year-old Joseph Couch, who opened fire on the busy stretch of freeway near Exit 49 on Sept. 7, sparking an 11-day manhunt through the woods of northern Laurel County. The body was found near the freeway.
The McCoys were on day six of their own search for Couch when they found the body. They told WKYT that they decided to start looking for Couch as a date night idea.
Their previous livestreams, as expected, received less attention than Wednesday’s, which had nearly half a million views by Thursday afternoon. But the day before the body was found, they showed in another video the rugged terrain near the highway where they believe Couch fired at cars, hitting 12 people and wounding five.
The first few parts of the video, which runs for over an hour, showed Fred and Shelia walking along a wooded path next to the highway with the sound of roaring traffic in the background. About 18 minutes into the video, they arrive at the scene where it appears Couch has fired shots at the vehicles.
“This is it, this is his vantage point,” said Fred, who served more than 40 years in law enforcement as a Pike County sheriff's deputy and fire and police chief in Hustonville, a rural town in Lincoln County.
Trees are being cut down in the area and Fred wonders if Couch cut down the trees to improve his view of the highway, or if the police cut them down during the manhunt.
Then, about five miles from their car, they kept going, looking for Couch. Eventually, they got stuck on a cliff.
“We went further than we should have,” Fred said in the video. “Sheila was leading and she was holding on to a tree. I held on to her and went to the next tree. It was rough.”
Someone saw the McCoys on the edge of the cliff and called the police. When the couple finally got back to their car, two Kentucky State Trooper vehicles were waiting for them.
The troopers asked the McCoys what they were doing, and Fred replied, “Trying to find $35,000,” referring to the reward offered for Couch's capture. Fred also noted that Couch needed to be taken off the streets.
The McCoys apologized to officers for the disturbance and said they would return the next morning because there were buzzards flying around.
Fred and Shelia noticed that the buzzard kept moving from one part of the forest to another.
The next day they found Couch's body.
