Radio Station WHMI 93.5 FM – News, weather, traffic, sports, school news and the best classic hits from Livingston County, Michigan

(NEW YORK) – Schools in a Kentucky county reopened Tuesday under heavy police protection for the first time since a large-scale manhunt was launched for a suspect in connection with a highway shooting that injured five people 11 days ago.

With the suspect, 32-year-old Joseph Couch, still at large Tuesday, Laurel County Public Schools reopened their campuses to their nearly 9,000 students.

“We will not live our lives in fear,” Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said during a press conference on Tuesday.

The school district said in a statement that the reopening plan “makes the safety of our students and staff our top priority.”

“The reopening plan includes enhanced safety measures for bus transportation, school grounds and extracurricular activities,” the school district said.

According to Kentucky State Police, the search for Couch on Tuesday continued to focus on the dense woods of the Daniel Boone National Forest.

Both state and federal teams have combed at least 28,000 acres of the more than 700,000-acre national forest but have so far found no trace of Couch, officials said.

As the search continues in the national forest, authorities are expanding their hunt for Couch to surrounding communities.

Beshear said additional state funds would be made available to support ongoing search efforts.

The FBI and the US Marshals Service are assisting in the search.

The search for the gunman began Sept. 7 after police responded to reports that a dozen vehicles had been hit by gunfire on Interstate 75 near London, Kentucky, officials said.

The Laurel County Sheriff's Office said 20 to 30 shots were fired from a hill near Exit 49 on I-75.

Couch was initially named as a suspect after officers found his SUV abandoned on a wooded trail near Exit 49, officials said. An AR-15 rifle that Couch purchased in the hours before the shooting and that investigators believe was used in the incident was also found in the woods near Couch's vehicle, along with a bag with Couch's name written on it, officials said.

A day after the shooting, Couch was declared the prime suspect. Investigators warned that Couch was armed and dangerous.

In addition to the search of the national forest, a tip led investigators to search a home in Laurel County this week, but they were unable to find any evidence that Couch had been there, officials said.

Before the highway shooting, according to the warrant, a Laurel County 911 dispatcher received a call from a woman who claimed Couch had texted her before the highway shooting, telling her he was “going to kill a lot of people. Well, at least try.” The text was sent to the woman at 5:03 p.m. on Sept. 7, about a half-hour before the highway shooting began, according to the warrant.

“Couch sent another message to [the woman] Among other things, it said: ‘After this I will kill myself,’” the arrest warrant states.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.