A body believed to be of the suspect in a Kentucky highway shooting that left five people seriously injured this month was found on Wednesday, the authorities said, ending a manhunt that stretched into a second week and set the local community on edge.
The Kentucky State Police commissioner, Phillip Burnett Jr., said in a Wednesday night news conference that at approximately 3:30 p.m., two troopers and two civilians found an unidentified body in the brush behind the highway exit where the shooting occurred. The authorities found items with the body that were believed to belong to the suspect, Mr. Burnett said.
“The people of Laurel County can rest easy — much easier — knowing that this manhunt has now come to a conclusion,” he said.
The police have identified the suspect of the shooting as Joseph A. Couch, 32. They said that on Sept. 7, Mr. Couch perched on a cliff overlooking Interstate 75 about eight miles north of London, and opened fire. One of the wounded was shot in the face, and another was shot in the chest. A dozen vehicles were riddled with gunfire.
According to a police affidavit in support of arrest warrants, Mr. Couch purchased an AR-15-style rifle and 1,000 rounds of ammunition just hours before the shooting. He then sent a series of alarming text messages, including one that read: “I’m going to kill a lot of people. Well try at least.”
The manhunt, which on Wednesday stretched into its 12th day, began shortly after the shooting in a remote wooded area near London, a city of about 8,000 people located roughly an hour south of Lexington.
Authorities deployed dozens of officers, along with search dogs, a helicopter and a drone equipped with an infrared scanner. The search was complicated by the area’s difficult and remote terrain, authorities said, which included caves, rocky slopes and dense vegetation.
A couple who had been looking for the suspect and documenting their multiday searchin the Kentucky backwoods on YouTube helped authorities find the remains on Wednesday afternoon.
During a 30-minute livestream, the couple, Shelia and Fred McCoy, followed swarming vultures to a site with what appeared to be a body. In an interview with The Times, Mr. McCoy, a retired police chief for the Hustonville Police Department, said that the body was about one to two miles northwest of the highway exit where the shooting occurred. When Mr. McCoy started shouting, the police, who were already searching the area nearby, arrived at the scene quickly, he said.
The fact that the suspect remained at large for almost two weeks left the community in London anxious. The police warned residents to lock their doors and keep their porch lights on at night. Several schools canceled classes. Football games were called off at some high schools, and the police stepped up their presence at others.
Mr. Couch served in the Army Reserve as a combat engineer from 2013 to 2019, but was never deployed. According to court records, he has several charges on his criminal record and was arrested most recently in February. In that incident, he was charged with terroristic threatening after coming outside with a rifle and threatening to kill a man and his dog following a confrontation about Mr. Couch throwing a rock at the animal.
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