Parents’ fears as sniper still at large

ANXIOUS parents accompanied their children to school or kept them at home on Tuesday, a day after a sniper linked to the murder of six adults critically wounded a school pupil.

The governor pleaded with the gunman to surrender and "stop this insane killing".

"I can't stop going to work, the children can't stop going to school", said Henry Ollie, 48, leading his 12-year-old son, Charles, to the front door of Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, where the latest shooting happened.

Some parents served as volunteer guards, watching over intersections. But it appeared many decided to keep their children home as Monday's shooting fueled anxiety for families in already nervous suburbs. Some buses arriving at schools carried fewer students than usual.

Jessica McFadden, 13, said she knew of at least three friends whose parents were keeping them home. She came to school holding a pot of flowers and a teddy bear, a thank-you present for her teacher for her help on Monday.

Her mother, Diane McFadden, said she decided to let her daughter come to school because "they can't live in fear. That's why we're back. You can't stop what you're doing because of some sick person."

Governor Parris Glendening appealed for an end to the attacks.

"This is a person who is shooting elderly men, shooting women, and now shooting little children," Glendening said. "And I really think if there is any message, it is for this individual to turn himself in, to stop this insane killing."

Prince George's County, the scene of the latest shooting, sent two helicopters to patrol the county as schools opened and had police officers at every school. Police in neighbouring Montgomery County, where five people were killed last week, also guarded schools.

"As a community we clearly remain anxious," Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose said on Tuesday morning. "We have a very visible patrol around our schools and a very visible patrol around our freeways."

There was no immediate comment from Prince George's officials on precise attendance figures, but Jerry Weast, the Montgomery school superintendent, said attendance there was "at the lower end of the normal range".

Police in Prince George's County served a search warrant during the night, but the police chief said no arrests were made. No further details about the warrant were offered.

The 13-year-old student at Benjamin Tasker was shot as his aunt dropped him off on Monday morning.

The teen, wounded in the torso, was in critical but stable condition on Tuesday at Children's Hospital in Washington. Doctors said they were optimistic he would survive.

A task force including local and state police, the FBI and the Secret Service mobilised to pursue the sniper, but police acknowledged having few clues or eyewitness accounts to solve one of the most frightening serial killings in memory. Moose said on Tuesday police had received 1,250 credible leads from 6,025 calls.

The sniper has shot eight people since Wednesday, killing six.

One died on a Washington street, the others within five miles of each other in Maryland's Montgomery County.

An earlier attack a non-fatal shooting on September 14 in Montgomery County was being investigated to see if it was related, ATF agent Michael Bouchard said on Tuesday. Details of that shooting were not immediately released.

The latest attack on Monday morning was 20 miles farther east, in neighbouring Prince George's County north of Washington.

Ballistics tests found the bullet that struck the teen was identical to those that killed some of the others and wounded a woman in Virginia, said Joe Riehl, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

All victims were hit by a single bullet fired from a distance.

President Bush denounced the attacks as "cowardly and senseless acts of violence"