- Police widened their dragnet for a brazen serial sniper
who has killed seven and wounded two, after a man was shot dead at a gas
station as a state trooper stood across the road.
-
- Investigators said no positive link had yet been established
between the 9:40 am (1340 GMT) shooting at an Exxon station in this town
80 km (50 miles) south of Washington and the nine other shootings.
-
- However, said Major Harold Smith of the Spotsylvania
County sheriff's department, in whose jurisdiction the latest shooting
occurred, "Any time we get a shooting now we are going to assume it's
linked to these others until it's proven differently."
-
- He said local, state and federal investigators were looking
at evidence that could link the latest killing with the nine other shootings.
-
- Numerous federal agencies, including the Secret Service,
have joined the manhunt, and the White House said President George W. Bush
was getting daily briefings on the shootings.
-
- Police have said evidence from ballistics tests and autopsies
positively tied the first nine shootings, which began the night of October
2, to the same weapon, a 5.56-millimeter assault-type rifle.
-
- The victims included four people shot dead as they were
gassing up at self-service filling stations, which require the driver to
get out of the vehicle.
-
- "We are working on a mathematical formula to see
when he will try to strike," said a Federal Bureau of Investigation
spokesman who declined to be named. "We are trying to find a sense
of logic."
-
- Smith said unspecified evidence picked up at the scene
of Friday's shooting was being analyzed by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms, part of a growing task force of local, county, state and
federal agencies in the region around the US capital.
-
- Smith said the latest attack fit the pattern of the sniper
attacks, but with a bizarre new twist.
-
- A Virginia state trooper was directly across the street
from the filling station working an accident scene when he heard the shot
and rushed to the stricken man, who died in a local hospital.
-
- Smith said it was evident, with a police officer virtually
on the scene at the time, that the killer was "extremely violent and
obviously doesn't care."
-
- The sniper appeared to have taunted police before with
a message left at the scene of a shooting Monday. Scribbled on the "Death
card" of a Tarot deck, it read: "Dear Policeman, I am God."
-
- A shell casing was also found at that scene on the grass,
where police suspect the killer lay in wait for a 13-year-old boy shot
as he was being dropped off at school. The boy remained in critical condition
in a Washington hospital.
-
- "This was a personal message to us, and the intention
of the (sniper) was to develop a relationship with us," said one detective
of the Tarot card, speaking on condition of anonymity.
-
- Smith said a white Chevrolet Astrovan with a ladder mounted
on its roof had been sited in the area of Friday's shooting, and huge traffic
jams clogged Interstate 95, the main north-south artery, as police pulled
over and checked dozens of similar vehicles.
-
- Police in Maryland, where the shooting spree began with
five killings in 16 hours in the affluent Washington suburb of Bethesda,
said the FBI was to release a "graphic aid" on the sniper case
later in the day, without elaborating.
-
- Schools near the shooting sites have cancelled outdoor
sports activities and kept students indoors. Many of Bethesda's trendy
boutiques and restaurants have reported slower business as residents limited
their outdoor time.
-
- All of the victims were carrying out everyday activities
in the Washington area, shopping or putting gas in their cars, when they
were shot.
-
- Five people were killed within a 16-hour period from
late October 2 to October 3 in Montgomery County, which borders Washington.
A sixth person was shot in the chest and killed late October 3 while standing
on a Washington street corner close to the Maryland border.
-
- On October 4, a woman was shot in the back in the parking
lot of a shopping mall in nearby Fredericksburg, Virginia, but survived.
-
- A 13-year-old boy was shot in Bowie, Maryland, after
being dropped off at school Monday and remains hospitalized, while a 53-year-old
man was shot and killed late Wednesday while getting gas in Manassas, Virginia.
-
- The reward for information leading to the killer's capture
and conviction has soared to more than 350,000 dollars.
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