US sniper claims another victim, but police may at last have breakthrough
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Your support makes all the difference.Police confirmed yesterday that the shooting of a 53-year-old man as he filled his car at a Virginia petrol station was the work of the Washington sniper bringing to eight the number of people he has killed and adding to the panic gripping the region. It also emerged that police may have obtained a CCTV image of the sniper.
Kenneth Bridges, 53, was shot once in the back as he filled his car at an Exxon station in Fredericksburg, 60 miles south of Washington, on Friday morning, as a state trooper dealt with a traffic accident just 50 yards away. A white van possibly the getaway vehicle of the sniper was seen racing from the scene. Ironically the garage bore the name "On the Run".
Major Howard Smith, of Spotsylvania County Police, said that an analysis by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms showed the bullet that killed Mr Bridges, a father of six, came from the same .223 calibre rifle used in nine shootings in the previous 10 days. Two of the sniper's victims were seriously wounded but are expected to survive.
"Ballistics evidence has conclusively linked the shooting in Spotsylvania to the other shootings in DC and Montgomery County," said Mr Smith.
While the link had been widely anticipated, the confirmation will add to the growing unease. Schoolchildren remained inside on Friday as schools ordered a security lock-down, while this weekend Columbus Day weekend and normally a major holiday hundreds of sports matches and outdoor events have been cancelled.
Police were due to release a photofit image last night of a white van they believe the sniper and possibly an accomplice has been using. After Friday morning's shooting, hundreds of officers launched a massive hunt along the region's main highways as they searched for the white van seen leaving Spotsylvania County.
It emerged yesterday that officers may have obtained a photographic image of the sniper. Hobert Epps, who was staying at a motel near the Exxon garage, said officers who questioned him compared his face with a wallet-sized photograph of a white man with sandy-coloured hair that he said police told him had been taken from a surveillance camera near one of the shooting incidents.
"They thought I was the sniper," Mr Epps, 36, from Athens, Georgia, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Experts are now offering advice on how motorists can fill their cars safely bending the knees to present a lower profile. Virginia's Governor, Mark Warner, also appealed for people to carry on their lives in as normal a way as possible. "We all in the community feel concerned and feel stressed," he said. "It is our right to feel that, but we have to get on with our lives."
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