Terrified parents make hard choices in face of threat to children’s safety

NERVOUS parents yesterday faced a terrifying choice about whether to take their children to school after the Washington sniper warned that youngsters were “not safe anywhere, at any time”.

Classroom doors were bolted shut and shades covered windows as pupils were kept indoors until going home following the chilling threat which was made public on Tuesday.

Armed police also guarded many of the schools in the Washington metropolitan area, which serves 700,000 pupils.

American Association of School Administrators President Paul Houston explained the dilemma facing parents and authorities.

“Do you close the schools and have children out on the street or unsupervised? Or do you bring them into school in a more supervised environment, but take the chance of getting them in and out of the building safely?”

Dewitt Wood, from Montgomery County, Maryland, took his son home early yesterday following the fatal shooting of a local bus driver by the sniper. He is now considering keeping his son at home until the gunman is caught.

“If I had known earlier about the shooting, I probably wouldn’t have let him come to school at all,” he said.

All outdoor activities and school trips have been cancelled as fears escalate about the serial sniper who has killed ten and wounded three since October 2. Many pupils struggled to get to school after buses were cancelled and huge traffic jams developed as police set up dragnets to try to catch the sniper.

“My kid was fine until he heard on the radio the other day that kids are not safe anytime, anywhere,” Andy Wisecarver said as he hurried his eight-year-old son into an elementary school in Kensington, Maryland.

“I’m not afraid of the sniper,” 17-year-old Heather Willson said defiantly outside Albert Einstein High School in Kensington, Maryland. “He mostly takes people out in groups of ones and twos, and normally it’s in a wide-open space.”

Kathy Franco cased the strip mall off Silver Spring’s Cherry Hill Road twice before she decided to shop at the Babies R Us store there. She wanted to make sure there were no woods nearby where a sniper could hide.

She was already angry that a sniper has disrupted life in the Washington area. But when she learned that he was specifically targeting children, her anger turned to rage.

“This isn’t a person as far as I’m concerned,” she said as she pushed 6-week-old daughter Katherine and two-year-old son Liam in a shopping cart at the Silver Spring store in Maryland.

“Whoever or whatever this is, it’s not a human being if he targets children. There’s nothing that can justify that.”

Meanwhile, businesses in the suburban area around the US capital reported a drop in business as thousands of customers stayed at home. Most of the shootings took place in public places, including car parks outside busy shops and restaurants.

There are also growing fears the sniper could disrupt congressional elections due to take place on November 5. Pollsters fear turnout could drop by more than 10%. Authorities are now considering using the National Guard for security on election day.