Panic grips region as sniper kills again
Police are still trying to establish whether it was the same shooter who has killed seven people and seriously injured two others within a 30-mile radius over the last 10 days.
The petrol station location, the single shot and reports of a white van, similar to that seen at the scene of Wednesday's shooting at Mannassas, lead police to believe it the same man.
Yesterday's shooting happened at 9.30am at an Exxon station just south of Fredericksburg, state police spokeswoman Lucy Caldwell said.
The man was standing at a petrol station when he was shot dead in an attack as a state trooper worked on a traffic accident directly across the street.
The trooper heard the shot at about 9:30am but only saw the victim, a black man, fall, said Major Howard Smith of the Spotsylvania County Sheriff's Office.
"With a uniformed trooper across the street, obviously we're dealing with an individual who is extremely violent and doesn't care," Smith said.
Bruce Bingham, who was working across the street from the station, said he also heard a single gunshot and saw an unmarked white van at the corner.
Authorities said witnesses saw two people in the van and were able to give police a brief description.
Police closed down parts of nearby Interstate 95 and were stopping white vans there and on other roads in the area.
There have been no known witnesses to the attacks. However, police have been reviewing video surveillance tapes from the shooting scenes all public places.
Yesterday's was the fourth shooting at a petrol station and fear is running so high at service stations that "people are paying for their petrol and then driving away without pumping it," said employee Shaun Oles at the Exxon on Bowie's Route 301.
Among the most mundane of chores, the simple act of filling up has been transformed into a chilling prospect by the fatal sniper shootings of three service station customers.
Across the region yesterday, drivers avoided petrol pumps even as their tanks ran dry.
They opted for the full-service pump so they could stay in their cars, and they hunched into the smallest possible target when they had no choice but to pump their own petrol.
A surprising number darted in to pay in advance and then drove off without pumping a drop.
Police Chief Charles Moose of Montgomery County, Maryland, said yesterday a special projects unit of the FBI was working with a sense of urgency on a graphic aid that will be distributed to the public in the search for the sniper.
A 53-year-old civil engineer travelling from his job in Virginia to his home in Gaithersburg, Maryland, was killed after filling his tank just off Interstate 66.
Like the other victims, Dean Meyers was felled by a single shot from a high-powered rifle. Police said ballistic evidence linked Meyers' death to the sniper.
The shootings, including one on Monday that critically wounded a 13-year-old boy outside his school in Bowie, Maryland, have led schools across the region to cancel field trips and outdoor activities during the week.
