Frightening update in hunt for US veteran gunman on the run in Kentucky after ‘shooting five people’

An Army veteran is still on the run after firing an AR-15 rifle on a busy Kentucky highway, and authorities have now revealed how he purchased the firearm hours before the shooting.

Joseph Couch, 32, has not been caught since Saturday afternoon. His gun was found in a wooded area, along with ammunition, his car and what Laurel County police said may be his cellphone.

The discovery was the result of a days-long search Saturday and Sunday through the rugged, hilly, densely wooded terrain near Exit 49 of I-75.

The night before, Crouch had fired the same weapon from a cliff on the side of the highway about nine miles north of London.

He hit 12 cars and five people, injuring them. No one was killed, and the search for Couch continued early Monday morning.

“There are still a lot of people searching in the wooded area,” Deputy Sheriff Gilbert Acciardo said at the crime scene Sunday.

‘The ATF, FBI and Marshal Service, their ERTS (Emergency Response Teams) are there to help us process “What we have so far,” he said.

‘Last night we recovered the suspect’s vehicle in that area – that’s why he’s a suspect. The vehicle came back in his name.

“That discovery was made late last night and that’s why we had the information we had today,” he continued, before revealing what authorities had found seconds earlier.

“Just a few minutes ago. We found an AR-15,” he said.

“It’s being processed and it’s in a wooded area next to the highway.”

He added that the weapon was “found at a location [where Couch] ‘would have crashed on the highway’, before answering a question about where police had found the car the night before.

“It’s located on a forest road up on the hill, just off Exit 49, at the end of another little path that goes off that forest road,” he said.

‘Very close to the highway, but not so close that [Couch] could have shot from that location.

‘He had to continue walking towards the highway, and that’s where we found the weapon.’

Following the discovery, police upgraded Couch from suspect to suspect. When asked about this, Laurel County Sheriff John Root indicated that this development also stemmed from “certain information” that he could not share.

Root added that he and investigators were confident that Couch was still in the area, hiding in the woods. State Police Trooper Scottie Pennington said it was like “walking through the jungle,” and you would need machetes to get through the thick woods.

Acciardo added that it appeared the attacker had specifically planned the shooting from that location, due to its remoteness and hilly terrain.

The area is rocky and difficult to navigate. It wasn’t until Laurel County Sheriff’s Captain Richard Dalrymple discovered it that he grabbed a tree and looked at the spot: a ledge about 30 feet down from a cliff overlooking Exit 49.

Dalrymple testified during a briefing later that evening that Couch had legally purchased approximately 1,000 rounds of ammunition and the gun used in the incident on Saturday morning, just hours before the shooting.

Following that revelation, the massive 150-man search for Couch, which had begun on Monday at 8 a.m., was called off for the night.

Earlier on Sunday, Acciardo described the shooting of Couch as “sniper-like” and claimed the shooting was not the result of road rage but was premeditated.

He added that investigators at the time did not believe the shooter, a confirmed Army veteran who lived in Woodbine, knew any of the victims or had contact with them before firing the bullets.

Despite the fact that the weapon he used in the incident was recovered, officers said Sunday that the suspect is still armed and may be dangerous. Anyone who sees him was warned not to approach the suspect themselves, but to contact authorities instead.

Investigators also raised the possibility that Couch may have committed suicide somewhere in the woods, but that remains questionable.

Police said the victims he shot had injuries to their faces, chests and arms, but all were in stable condition at a hospital Sunday night. No one was named.

A witness told ABC’s Good Morning America on Sunday that she was driving south on I-75 with a friend, en route to Tennessee, when the shooting broke out around 5:30 p.m. Saturday.

“All of a sudden we heard this loud, deafening sound,” Dinoto said. “And my ear, my right ear, started ringing,

“We didn’t know what the sound was, but we looked at each other and said, was that a gunshot?”