Five injured after shooting near Kentucky highway, ‘armed and dangerous’ person of interest ID’d

A shooting near a Kentucky highway Saturday night left five people seriously injured, and the search for a person of interest considered “armed and dangerous” is underway, authorities said.

The Laurel County Sheriff’s Office said a stretch of Interstate 75 eight miles north of the small city of London was shut down amid the law enforcement response. The interstate later reopened.

“Deputies found nine vehicles had been shot into both north and south bound on I-75 and five persons were seriously injured,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.

Deputy Gilbert Acciardo said Sunday that all five people injured were expected to survive. He added that 50 to 60 police officers had searched for a person of interest until 3 a.m. on Sunday, and that the search resumed at daybreak.

“No one was killed from this, thankfully,” London Mayor Randall Weddle said in a video posted to Facebook. “But we ask that you continue to pray.”

The mayor had previously said that some people had been injured by gunfire and collisions, though the sheriff’s statement did not confirm how many were wounded by gunshots rather than injured in the crashes.

Saint Joseph London hospital said in a statement that it has received “multiple patients” in the attack and that they are all being treated for minor injuries.

“We are devastated by the events that occurred along Interstate 75 in Laurel County, Kentucky Saturday night,” the hospital said. 

A spokesperson for University of Kentucky Albert B. Chandler Hospital in Lexington said it received two patients from the incident but did not immediately provide details about them.

Joseph A. Couch, 32, was named as the person of interest, according to Kentucky State Police and the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office. He’s described as white, 5 feet, 10 inches tall and weighing 154 pounds.

Law enforcement officers found a vehicle during a search of the area the night of the shooting, which was a “lucky break” that led them to identifying a person of interest, according to Acciardo.

A gun case was found with the vehicle, and authorities subsequently found an AR-15 gun on Sunday. The gun was being processed to see if it is the weapon used in the shooting, Acciardo told reporters.

“We’ll have to let ballistics tell us whether it was or was not,” Acciardo said. “There were several magazines in there as well, fully charged magazines.”

Acciardo said his office was not yet listing Couch as a suspect, but were confident that they had him penned in a remote area and were confident they’d find him Sunday.

“I just feel like we’re getting him today, I really do,” he said.

In a statement shared on Facebook, the sheriff’s office said people should not approach Couch but should report his whereabouts to authorities immediately if they spot him.

His father, Dale Couch, told NBC News that he “can’t believe” the news that police are searching for his son. He and his son do not have much of a relationship and have not spoken in nearly three years, his father said.

“I’ve just been praying that everyone is OK and that he may turn himself in,” his father said.

Since he no longer lives in Kentucky, he said the news came last night via a phone call from his daughter. He added that he did not want to comment much since he didn’t have any more information.

“If I knew where he was, trust me, I’d be talking to him to get him to turn himself in,” he added.

‘A very loud noise’

Christina DiNoto was driving from Rochester, New York, and passing through the area on a road trip with a friend when their car was shot, DiNoto told NBC News.

“We were just driving along. I was in the middle lane, and all of a sudden we heard like a very loud noise and almost like an explosion,” DiNoto said.

They both jumped up in their seats, initially thinking a rock flew through a window but couldn’t see any damage to the vehicle. Then DiNoto said they saw a person in a white truck to their right pull off the road and assumed the noise was a tire blow out.

It wasn’t until later, when the pair were in Knoxville, Tennessee, that DiNoto saw the damage to her Toyota 4Runner: a dent in one of the SUV’s “thick” rims.

“And then above that, on the back corner panel, there’s a bunch of paint chips missing,” DiNoto said. “So it looks to me like it was like a ricochet bullet and — if I had to guess — I would assume that the white truck that was next to us got ricocheted off and hit my vehicle.”

DiNoto said it was a “very surreal and scary” to be part of an active shooter situation.

“That’s the kind of thing that you just see on the news, you know? And we were literally in the midst of it, so it didn’t really click right away,” DiNoto said. “But after, you know, we sat there and thought about it, I realized how lucky we were that we weren’t, you know, seriously injured or even killed.”

Gov. Andy Beshear said on social media platform X Saturday that he was aware of the situation.

“We are actively monitoring the situation and offering support in any way possible,” he said.

Agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were responding to assist state police and local authorities, the ATF said.