A 37-year-old man was shot last night outside a restaurant near Interstate 95, north of Richmond, in a similar attack to the sniper shootings that have killed nine people in the Washington area.
Police swarmed over the area after the shooting, but it was not immediately clear if the shooting was the work of the sniper, reported the Washington Post.
”We’re not sure that it is and we’re not sure that it isn’t,” the paper quoted Hanover County Sheriff Stuart Cook as saying.
The newspaper described the shooting victim as a man from outside Virginia who was traveling through the area and had stopped to get food and fuel.
The man’s wife ”heard a crack from the tree line” of the wooded area behind the parking lot, a policeman said.
The man took three steps and collapsed. He was taken to the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Medical College of Virginia Hospital, where he was reported to be in critical condition this morning after surgery, said the Washington Post.
Police said on Saturday said they may have discovered a white delivery van used by the sniper.
However ballistic testing on a shell casing found in the van at a rental agency in northern Virginia would not yield results until Monday, said Charles Moose, police chief of Montgomery County, Maryland.
Ballistic testing should reveal whether the shell casing matched bullets fired at 11 people by the unknown sniper since October 2. Police seized the van after a cleaner at the rental agency near Dulles International Airport discovered the casing while cleaning the vehicle and alerted police.
Coming after the terror and anthrax attacks in the Washington region last year, the sniper attacks scattered around suburban Washington have unleashed fear. Consumers are avoiding stores and schools are keeping children indoors. Sports events have in some cases been cancelled or relocated events and state governments have cancelled deer-hunting season.
More than 1 000 local, state and federal investigators are on the case. On Friday, Virginia police arrested and charged a man for misleading investigators about the identity of a man and vehicle he allegedly saw at a shooting site earlier this week. Police returned to the petrol station where the attack occurred to widen their search area after discovering the discrepancies in the eyewitness report.
Among the cancelled events was a music concert with Latino stars, an annual art festival in Bethesda, and a vintage automobile race in Rockville where up to 20 000 people were expected.
Officials have indicated that more than one person could be behind the attacks. One of the few clues until discovery of the casing has been a tarot death card found at one murder scene with the message, ”Dear Policeman, I am God”. – Sapa, Staff Reporter