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Sniper may have left message
©Associated Press
ASHLAND, Va. -- Authorities believe the Washington-area sniper left a message with a telephone number at the scene of the latest shooting in Virginia, the Associated Press and other new services reported Sunday night. Police appealed to the person who left the message to contact them. "To the person who left us a message at the Ponderosa last night. You gave us a telephone number. We do want to talk to you. Call us at the number you provided. Thank you," Montgomery County, Md., Police Chief Charles Moose said in a televised briefing. Moose made his cryptic statement as sniper task force investigators said they were working on the assumption that the sniper has expanded his geographic reach after shooting 11 people, nine fatally, in the Washington area since Oct. 2. Moose refused to elaborate or take questions about the message or how it was left. But he asked the news media to "carry it clearly and carry it often." After the briefing, Officer Joyce Utter, spokeswoman for Montgomery County police, said Moose's statement "should make complete sense" to the person who left the message. "That is the only person Chief Moose wants to talk to," she said. A law enforcement official told the Associated Press that the person who left the message is probably the sniper who is responsible for the Washington area shootings. In the latest attack, a 37-year-old man was shot and critically wounded in the Ponderosa parking lot Saturday night. The victim, hit by a single shot in the abdomen, went back into surgery Sunday night to reconnect his stomach and intestines, hospital spokeswoman Pam Lepley said. "If there's any good news it's that he was stable enough to be taken into surgery," Lepley said. She said surgery began at 6:50 p.m. Sunday, but could not say how long it would take. Investigators who combed the area outside the Ponderosa finished their search Sunday but said little about what, if anything, they found. Some witnesses said they heard a shot coming from a wooded area near the restaurant, but nobody reported seeing the shooter. If the shooting is linked to the sniper attacks, it would be the first weekend attack and the farthest the sniper has traveled -- about 85 miles south of Washington. The longest previous distance from the Washington area was Spotsylvania County, about 50 miles south of Washington. It would also break the longest lull between shootings, about five days. Former FBI profiler Clinton Van Zandt said Saturday's shooting, if related, could show the killer's approach is changing in response to law enforcement tactics. For instance, reports last week that military surveillance planes would be used in the Washington suburbs probably prompted the sniper to move farther away, he said. And since much had been made about the weekend lulls, "I think he reacted to that," Van Zandt said. The most recent confirmed sniper attack was the Monday night slaying of FBI analyst Linda Franklin outside a Home Depot store in Falls Church. Residents were on edge in Ashland, a town of about 6,500. At the Virginia Center Commons mall, about 7 miles from the shooting, a normally busy food court sat half-empty Sunday. Shopper Nancy Elrod said she almost had been too afraid to come. "We certainly felt sorry about all the people up north who were nervous and now it's down here and we're nervous too," said Elrod, 45. Police said the victim, whose name was not released, and his wife were traveling and stopped in Ashland for gas and food. His wife told authorities the shot sounded like a car backfiring and said her husband took about three steps before collapsing. The victim underwent surgery for three hours Saturday night at Virginia Commonwealth University's Medical College of Virginia Hospital in Richmond, Lepley said. Doctors had to remove part of the man's stomach, half of his pancreas and his spleen, said Dr. Rao Ivatury, the hospital's director of trauma and critical care. The man was conscious but unable to talk because he was on a ventilator. "The prognosis is still guarded, but since he is a very healthy man and he is very young, the chances are fair to good, I would say," Ivatury said. Unless the bullet is removed, officials can't conclusively determine whether it was fired from the same rifle used in the 11 previous assaults. However, it may be possible at least to determine if the bullet is the same size, .223-caliber, that was used in the earlier attacks, said Dr. Paul B. Ferrara, director of Virginia's Division of Forensic Science. "It depends on the condition of the bullet and how badly fragmented it is," Ferrara said. "Sometimes a firearms expert can assess or approximate the caliber of weapon by looking at X-rays from different angles." Public schools in the Ashland and Richmond area will be closed today, "based on the volume of parent and community concern," school officials from Richmond and three area counties announced Sunday. After the earlier sniper slayings, schools restricted activities but didn't close. Authorities in Maryland, meanwhile, continued testing a shell casing found in a white rental truck to determine if it could be linked to the sniper attacks. Police said it would be at least today before they could announce whether the casing is connected to the shootings. The Associated Press, however, reported Sunday that the casing was a different size from the sniper's bullets. The shell casing was found in a vehicle seized at a rental agency near Dulles International Airport in Virginia, authorities said.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
