Schools close as search for gunman who wounded 5 people on Kentucky interstate drags into third day

LONDON — More than a dozen school districts shut down Monday across a wide swath of southeastern Kentucky as a grueling search stretched into a third day for a gunman who opened fire on an interstate highway and wounded five people over the weekend.

Searches have been combing the rugged, hilly area since Saturday evening, when a gunman began shooting at drivers on Interstate 75 near London, a small city of about 8,000 people about 75 miles (120 kilometers) south of Lexington.

“We’re not going to quit until we do lay hands on him,” Laurel County Sheriff John Root said Sunday night.

Joseph A. Couch, 32, was named a suspect in the shooting after authorities recovered his SUV on a service road near the crime scene. They later found a semiautomatic weapon nearby that they believe was used in the shooting, said Deputy Gilbert Acciardo, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office.

Christina DiNoto, who witnessed the shooting Saturday while driving on I-75, said Monday that it weighed heavily on her mind.

“To know that he’s still at large — that makes me nervous, honestly,” she said.

DiNoto, an IT project manager, said the shooting also unlocked a new kind of fear, “like you have to be scared to even just drive on the highways.”

Authorities vowed to keep up a relentless pursuit of the gunman in the densely wooded area as stress levels remained high for residents and law enforcement officers.

Administrators in Rockcastle County, just north of where the shooting took place, said in a social media message that they decided to close classes while the shooter is still at large ”out of an abundance of caution.”

To the south, schools were also closed in Knox County “as a precautionary measure to ensure student and staff safety,” the district said in a social media message. Classes also were canceled at three regional college campuses.

Laurel County Attorney Jodi L. Albright said Sunday night that no tip from the public is too small and that Couch “will be brought to justice.”

But Albright also acknowledged the vastness of the search area: “He could be there for a long time, if he’s still alive.”

Capt. Richard Dalrymple of the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office said authorities are doing everything they can.

“The longer we continue, and the more area we clear and the more places we are sure he is not, the safer people are going to be,” he said. “And I’m confident eventually we’ll figure it out and we’ll find him.”

State police Master Trooper Scottie Pennington, a spokesman for the London post, said troopers are being brought in from across the state to aid in the search focused on a remote area about 8 miles (13 kilometers) north of London. He described the extensive search area as “walking in a jungle” with machetes needed to cut through thickets.

Couch most recently lived in Woodbine, a small community about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of the shooting scene. Authorities said he purchased the weapon and about 1,000 rounds of ammunition Saturday morning in London.

Couch served in the National Guard for at least four years, Dalrymple said. The U.S. Army said in a statement that Couch was in the Army Reserve from March 2013 to January 2019 as a combat engineer.

“He was a private at the end of service,” the Army said. “He has no deployments.”

Authorities initially said nine vehicles were struck by gunfire but later increased that number to 12, saying some people did not realize their cars had been hit by bullets until they arrived home. The gunman fired 20 to 30 rounds when he targeted the interstate Saturday, they said.

DiNoto, 39, was driving through Kentucky with a friend on her way back to Houston after visiting relatives in Rochester, New York, when they heard a loud noise Saturday and assumed a rock had hit her back windshield. Her friend wondered whether it was gunshots, but they quickly dismissed the possibility.

The driver of a truck in the next lane slumped over and pulled to the side of the road, but DiNoto assumed the cause was something like a tire blowout. They saw first responders barreling down the highway but didn’t realize there’d been a shooting until the friend’s dad called to check on them 90 minutes later.

“We were in the middle of nowhere, Kentucky, and it was just like, what? Somebody was on an overpass shooting AR-15 at us?” DiNoto said.

Acciardo said authorities found Couch’s abandoned vehicle Saturday and an AR-15 rifle on Sunday in a wooded area near a highway where “he could have shot down upon the interstate.” A phone believed to be Couch’s was also found by law enforcement, but the battery had been taken out.

Specially trained officers were deployed through the night in strategic locations in the woods to prevent the shooter from slipping through, he said.

“We’ve got to get him,” Acciardo said.