The sniper shooting drama that has gripped the Washington area appeared no closer to being solved on Monday, as investigators continue to counsel the public that they are just one good tip away from cracking the case.
”People are continuing to give us information; we’re following up those leads,” said Charles Moose, police chief in Montgomery County Maryland, where five of the shootings occurred. ”We want people to keep the faith and remember this is certainly not the first person or group of people who tried to change us or change the nation. So please continue to be resilient,” Moose told reporters on Sunday.
The roving sniper killed eight and wounded two in an 11-day shooting spree. The last shooting occurred early on Friday at a Virginia gas station. Ballistics tests showed that each of the 10 victims were felled by a single shot from the same weapon — a 5.56-millimetre (.223-caliber) assault-type rifle.
In Alexandria, Virginia, a community group known as the Guardian Angels pumped gas for people afraid to get out of their cars. Four of the victims were shot at gas stations. ”People are absolutely afraid. The general consensus is they don’t want to go to the suburbs to pump gas, they want to go to metro DC were they feel safer because there’s more traffic and less of a chance the sniper will strike there,” said Arnold Salinas, a founder of the Guardian Angels, outside a filling station.
Over the weekend, Washingtonians avoided places they see as potentially risky, such as health clubs with glass windows, gas stations and playgrounds. ”I draw a lot from local people, and they just weren’t coming” said Mary Kay Rick, head of Tour DC, a walking tour group.
”It’s even worse than it was after the September 11 attacks. It’s so random and so scary I think people are just hunkering down.”
Local schools from Maryland to Virginia banned students from playing outside and cancelled field trips. Fear of further shootings prompted organisers to cancel numerous outdoor events, including annual outdoor runs in Rockville, Maryland — the site of one of the fatal shootings. ”If something happened, you couldn’t defend it,” said Rockville representative Neil Greenberger.
He added that fear has gripped officials and residents alike in this region around the US capital of more than five million inhabitants. The reward for information leading to the arrest of the serial sniper has topped
$500 000, a bounty officials which has resulted in thousands of leads being phoned in to a police hotline about the case.
Meanwhile, the US Defence Department has been asked to review its records of rejected applicants and former enlistees with marksmanship skills, as police attempt to find the shooter, according to media reports. According to news reports, the Defence Department also has been asked to search records from the sniper school at Fort Bragg in North Carolina for applicants and former students with psychological problems.
The shooter has felled all of his victims with a single bullet, leading investigators to speculate that he might have had military training as a marksman. The suspect has also shown great skill in eluding authorities, shooting his victims from too remote a distance to be seen, and quickly escaping without a trace on area freeways.
Authorities released a drawing of a white, box-like truck with damage to a rear bumper seen near some of the shootings. A second composite of a white Chevy minivan also seen by witnesses speeding away from shooting sites would be released on Monday, Moose said.
More than 1 000 local, state and federal officials were working on the case. – Sapa-AFP