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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021020/ap_on_re_us/sniper_shootings_307http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021020/ap_on_re_us/sniper_shootings_307
U.S. National - AP
Sniper Fears Grow After Va. Shooting
36 minutes ago
By ALLEN G. BREED, Associated Press Writer
ASHLAND, Va. (AP) - Authorities combed the woods and parking lot behind a steakhouse Sunday trying to find evidence that may link the shooting of 37-year-old man to the sniper attacks that have claimed nine lives in the Washington area.
The man was shot once in the stomach shortly before 8 p.m. Saturday as he and his wife left a Ponderosa restaurant, authorities said. He was in critical condition Sunday morning at MCV Hospital in Richmond.
Hospital spokeswoman Pam Lepley said the man underwent surgery for three hours Saturday night, and may require more. Authorities said doctors had not yet managed to remove the bullet — a crucial piece of ballistics evidence that has been used by police to connect the 11 other shootings in the region.
Shortly after dawn Sunday, about 40 to 50 officers from local police, FBI (news - web sites) and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms spread out in a line at the edge of a thin screen of hardwoods behind the restaurant, and began an inch-by-inch search. There's a gravel right-of-way and a shallow creek running through the woods, which was littered with cigarette butts, beer and soda cans and the remnants of an old campfire.
Earlier, Ashland Police Chief Frederic Pleasants Jr. had said no evidence was found during searches conducted immediately following the shooting. At one point early Sunday morning, police used a bloodhound at the scene.
Some witnesses said they heard a shot coming from the woods, but nobody reported seeing the shooter.
The sniper shootings began Oct. 2. The most recent shooting confirmed to be linked to the sniper was the Monday night slaying of FBI analyst Linda Franklin outside a Home Depot store in Falls Church.
If the Saturday night shooting turns out to be related, it would be the first time the sniper has attacked on a weekend, and it would break the longest lull between shootings, about five days.
It would be the farthest south the sniper has traveled — Ashland is about 85 miles south of Washington. Previously, the farthest the sniper has strayed from the Washington area has been Spotsylvania County, about 50 miles south of Washington.
Pleasants said state police shut down Interstate 95 immediately after the shooting was reported, as well as Route 54, where the Ponderosa is located, and Route 1, another major artery less than a quarter mile away.
"From the minute the call was received, a plan of action was put into place for setting up roadblocks," Hanover County Sheriff's Col. Stuart Cook said. "It was a rolling, continual thing."
Maryland State Police Sgt. William Vogt said troopers were on the lookout early on for a white van with a ladder rack. Pleasants said after interviewing witnesses, though, police had no suspects and no clear description of a vehicle that could be placed at the scene.
Pleasants said the victim and his wife had been traveling through the area and stopped in Ashland, a town of 6,500, 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.
Linwood Attkisson, a former mayor of Ashland who has lived in the town since 1939, said he hoped many times over the last couple of weeks that nothing like this would ever happen in his town.
"I feel certain that the person who's responsible for this is sitting at home laughing right now, watching the television somewhere and saying, 'I got them again,'" he said. "It's very sad. It's a very sick person to have done something like this to innocent people."
Russ Brickey, 26, a maintenance mechanic, said he had eaten at the Ponderosa many times and couldn't believe this type of violence had made its way to Ashland.
"This is like a high-tech Mayberry," Brickey said as he stood across the street from the restaurant. "Stuff like this isn't supposed to happen here — period."
Authorities in Maryland on Saturday, meanwhile, tested 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 Monday before they could announce whether the casing — found in a vehicle similar to one police have profiled in the ambush killings — is connected to the shootings.
But The Washington Post quoted sources as saying that the cartridge was for a 7.62 mm bullet, larger than the .223 caliber bullets implicated in the earlier shootings. The bullets cannot be fired from the same weapon.
The shell casing was found in a car seized at a rental agency near Dulles International Airport in Virginia, authorities said.
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Associated Press Writer Michael Buettner also contributed to this report.
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