Joseph Couch: Why finding the Kentucky shooting suspect is so difficult

CNN
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Thousands of hectares of wilderness. Sinkholes. And the danger of a shooter around every corner.

These are just some of the difficulties facing dozens of law enforcement officers working to find Joseph Couch, who is suspected of firing an AR-15 from a ledge on the side of a highway about 10 miles north of London, Kentucky, on Saturday, hitting 12 cars and injuring five people.

“It's like a jungle,” Kentucky State Police spokesman Scottie Pennington said Monday. The forest is full of cliffs, sinkholes, caves, culverts, and streams and rivers – all things that make hunting for Couch difficult.

Drones, helicopters, search dogs and teams from federal, state and local agencies are all involved in the manhunt in a remote part of the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky. The nearly 72-hour search focused on the heavily wooded area near where responders found Couch's semi-automatic rifle, ammunition, car and a phone believed to be his.

“Our main goal is to stay in the woods until we find him,” Pennington said at a news conference Tuesday. “And some people say, 'What if he's not alive?' Well, we're going to stay in the woods until we find him, and that's our job — whether he's dead or alive, it's our job to try to find him.”

Officers were even forced to use machetes to fight their way through the dense undergrowth.

“He couldn't have chosen a more remote area that would have made our search more difficult,” Laurel County Sheriff's Deputy Gilbert Acciardo said Sunday.

“This exit on I-75 is probably the most remote in all of Kentucky,” he said. “It's wooded. It's densely wooded. It's got hills. It's got rocks.”

The Daniel Boone National Forest encompasses 708,000 acres of federal land, including “some of the most rugged terrain west of the Appalachians,” according to the U.S. Forest Service. The forest is characterized by “steep forest slopes, sandstone cliffs, and narrow gorges,” according to the service.

The search for clues also led them to the house where Couch lived, Laurel County Sheriff John Root said Tuesday. He declined to say what kind of evidence was collected at the house.

There were leads that led authorities to investigate locations outside the forest, but “none of them led anywhere,” Pennington said, noting that further leads “are still being investigated.”

Craig Caudill, a wilderness education expert and director of Nature Reliance School, a Kentucky-based program less than 80 miles from the area where police are searching for Couch, said Couch could also encounter black bears and venomous snakes in that part of the state.

And while they are working, the search teams are racing against time: although some officers camp out all night, the authorities mostly stop their search operations after sunset because they are then in increased danger.

“We have to stop the operation at night because it is dangerous if our people are there and maybe go straight to that person,” said Acciardo. Officers will remain “in strategic positions to observe” throughout the night.

“Our helicopters can fly at night. They are looking for heat sources,” Pennington told reporters. Additional helicopters were participating in the search, he said on Tuesday.

The question is not if Couch will be found, but when, Caudill told CNN on Tuesday.

Caudill, who educates and trains police officers on behalf of the federal and state governments, said four of the teams he has worked with are actively searching the area.

Law enforcement authorities believe that Couch may still be armed and is therefore considered dangerous.

“Authorities are not only facing logistical challenges searching difficult terrain, but they are also searching for someone who clearly demonstrated a willingness to indiscriminately lose human life after opening fire on a highway,” said Josh Campbell, CNN security correspondent and former FBI agent.

“That makes him an extremely dangerous fugitive,” Campbell said. “Officers must work their way slowly and methodically through a dense wooded area, with their heads on swivels, knowing that behind the next tree could be a very real threat to their own safety.”

The search is “lengthy and exhausting”

Another challenge is the slow, methodical approach officers must take to secure any evidence they find, Pennington said.

“They are moving very slowly because they are not only looking for him, but also for evidence,” he said at a press conference on Monday.

Caudill said it was difficult to say what authorities were looking for.

“I train police officers for what they do and I don't want to say anything that would help the bad guys,” he said.

“He can't float on the ground,” Caudill said. “Every time he takes a step, he leaves a mark.”

The work itself is strenuous, prompting authorities to rotate teams so they can rest. Search personnel have to carry heavy equipment, making the work even more “arduous and tiring,” according to Acciardo.

Police said that while they believe Couch is still in the area, it's possible he left – or he may no longer be alive. In a text message he sent to a woman before the shooting, he said he was going to “kill a lot of people” and “kill myself afterward,” according to an arrest warrant.

The arrest warrant accuses Couch of five counts of attempted murder and five counts of first-degree assault.

As the search continues, law enforcement hopes to “wear down” Couch, as he may be alone in the woods without access to food and water.

“He (Couch) can survive for a few weeks,” Caudill estimates. “The question now is whether he will be a functioning human being again within a few days. After just three to four days without adequate fluid intake, his body no longer functions properly and he can no longer make good decisions.”

“That's what I call a limited decision-making position,” he said. “So he's not going to make the decisions he needs to take care of himself, which is a good thing for law enforcement in that regard.”

And that's exactly what law enforcement is hoping to do by “continuing to apply pressure and wearing down Mr. Couch the longer he is in the woods,” Pennington said.

“Hopefully at some point he'll just leave the forest and turn himself in,” he said.