It was supposed to be a short stop in Tucson, a blip on their trip from California back home to Alabama.
After spending 10 months in Los Angeles, Jake and Kristen Couch were inching closer to reuniting with loved ones and grieving with them the loss of their recently stillborn son, Brooks.
“It was hard being away from family,” Kristen Couch said. “We needed to look at something different than a nursery.”
So the pair started their trip across the country, making it to just Arizona before the heartbreakingly unexpected happened again.
About 10 a.m. Saturday, April 5, the couple was sitting at a downtown bus stop near East Broadway and South Sixth Avenue when Jake Couch was attacked by a passerby carrying a hatchet.
It happened fast.
Jake and Kristen Couch pose for a photo on Christmas 2023.
Just before the attack, the man began yelling at them to stand up, Kristen Couch said.
Before she could get up, she said, the man pulled a hatchet from under his jacket and struck her husband in the neck.
“Nobody helped us,” Kristen Couch said in an interview Friday, her voice trembling. “People were yelling, but nobody physically helped us.”
Couch said she attempted to perform CPR while applying pressure to her husband’s neck. But it was difficult to do it alone.
Her husband was rushed to Banner University Medical Center.
He remained there Friday morning. Kristen Couch said he is not expected to survive.
The couple, who have been together for 11 years, each have one child from a previous relationship. Baby Brooks would have been the couple’s first child together.
“He is the best husband. He loved me so much, and he loved his daughter and his son,” Kristen said. “Hopefully we were going to start trying again soon.”
Instead, Kristen Couch said, she is spending the last moments with her husband at the hospital.
There is solace, she said, in knowing her husband’s accused attacker is sitting in the Pima County jail.
Daniel Michael, 25, was arrested on suspicion of two counts of felony aggravated assault. He remained jailed Friday on a $1 million bond. Police have said they expect his charges to be elevated to murder if Couch dies.
