Uneasy residents of Kentucky town near I-75 shooting are locking doors and staying in

Flossie Lamb enjoys reading on the front porch of her tidy home overlooking Main Street in Livingston, and letting her son Abel, who is seven, play outside on the swing-set.

But that doesn’t feel safe these days.

That’s because Livingston, in Rockcastle County, is the closest town to the spot where a gunman shot into a dozen vehicles on Interstate 75 on Sept. 7 before disappearing into a rugged forest near the road, residents said.

Kentucky State Police and other agencies were still searching for the suspected shooter, Joseph A. Couch, on Tuesday.

“We’ve been staying inside with the doors locked as much as we can,” Lamb said Tuesday. “I’m not taking no chances.”

Residents in Livingston, which the U.S. Census Bureau estimated had a 2022 population of 158, said the town is about five miles as the crow flies from where the shootings happened in northern Laurel County, leaving five people seriously injured.

For some, that’s too close for comfort with Couch still on the run.

Bobbie Bishop said her boyfriend had left their tractor in the front yard rather than pull it into the barn, not knowing if Couch might have holed up there.

“You still got that fear that you’re gonna come out and he’s there, or he’s in your barn or your yard,” Bishop said.

Brenda Bond, who lives near town, said someone could easily walk from the site of the shooting to her house.

Her family enjoys riding off-road vehicles and dirt bikes on trails in the woods, but she’s barred her kids from being outside for the time being and started locking her doors.

“It’s really scary,” Bond said.

‘They don’t know where he’s at’

The unease around town has hurt business at the Family Dollar retail store she manages, said Carol Hasty.

“People are just not gonna come out because they don’t know where he’s at,” she said of Couch. “It’s affected business big time.”

The store closed early on Saturday, the day of the shooting, but has been open since.

Tina Tyree, the manager of the Marathon convenience store next to the Family Dollar, said the store closed early on Saturday because of concern about safety.

She opened up at 6 a.m. Sunday, but kept the door locked until full daylight so she could see who was at the door before letting them in.

“I was scared to death,” she said.

The store stays open until midnight. If employees there late at night want to, they can lock the door and have people go through the drive-thru, Tyree said.

Tyree, who lives in town, said she has started locking her door, which she didn’t typically do before.

The manhunt has been on the minds of many in town, which has no stoplight and measures just six-tenths of a mile between the north and south city-limit signs.

‘Living in fear’

The town was once an important stop on the railroad, with a depot, hotels, several businesses and a much larger population.

That faded after passenger rail service ended and construction of I-75 pulled traffic off U.S. 25, which passes through town, said Jeff Carpenter, chief of the volunteer fire department, Livingston Fire and Rescue.

The town lost its high school in the early 1970s and then the elementary school closed in 1994.

The area has had some success with adventure tourism in recent years, however, with several hiking trails nearby in the Daniel Boone National Forest and the Rockcastle River passing through.

There are empty storefronts in town, but the houses are generally well-kept and U.S. flags fly from utility poles along Main Street.

There is a memorial in town to David M. Smith, a Livingston native who received the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously for diving on a grenade in a foxhole in Korea in 1950 to save his fellow soldiers.

Carpenter, who retired from the Lexington Fire Department but does fire training and farms in addition to heading the local department, said many residents are on edge with Couch still apparently on the run, and some are angry.

The Livingston department responded to help with traffic control the night of the shooting, and some members who were armed provided security at a music festival near town, he said.

Carpenter said his wife, county Coroner Dawn Carpenter, monitors police scanner traffic. With heightened awareness of the manhunt for Couch, police are fielding calls “left and right,” Carpenter said.

“Every time somebody sees somebody walking on the side of the road with a backpack, they’re calling 9-1-1,” he said.

There seems to be fewer people out since the shootings, and some people are keeping lights in their houses off at night, he said.

“That tells me they’re living in fear,” Carpenter said.

This story was originally published September 11, 2024 at 6:00 AM.

Bill Estep

Lexington Herald-Leader

606-521-9607

Bill Estep covers Southern and Eastern Kentucky. Support my work with a digital subscription