Kentucky couple followed circling vultures to body believed to be that of highway shooting suspect

A Kentucky couple spent six days looking for a body believed to be that of the highway shooting suspect whom authorities have been hunting for over a week — and they eventually found it by following circling vultures, they said Thursday.

Fred and Sheila McCoy discovered remains that police believe are those of Joseph A. Couch on Wednesday in Laurel County and will receive $25,000 in reward money.

Authorities had been searching for Couch, 32, since the shooting on Sept. 7 next to Interstate 75, which seriously injured five people near the city of London, Kentucky.

Even though authorities had described Couch as armed and dangerous, Fred McCoy said he's a retired police officer and has found that fugitives quickly run out of steam on the lam. So capturing Couch wasn't as far-fetched as it might seem, the couple said.

"None of us are getting out of this world alive," Fred McCoy told NBC News. "We're Christians, and if we go, you know, if you're a Christian, your last breath here on Earth is your first in a better place."

Fred McCoy — who claims lineage to the famed Hatfield and McCoy clans of Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia — gave credit to his wife, a former elementary school aide, for first taking note of a foul odor that turned out to be coming from a decomposing body.

"The smell was terrible; it was horrible," said Sheila McCoy, 59. "And so when I got up here and saw that, that really freaked me out. It shocked me ... because I've never seen anything like that. I wasn't expecting him to be that deteriorated or in that kind of condition."

The couple were livestreaming their search on YouTube and spotted at least 40 vultures circling, which was their telltale sign of human remains.

"When you got that many vultures, you've either got a livestock, a horse, a cow or you've got a human," said Fred McCoy, 67. "That many birds don't feed on a raccoon."

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com