Washington parents apeak of anguish and fear

Parents in the suburbs around Washington anguished over their children’s safety today after a sniper, who murdered six adults last week, critically wounded a schoolboy.

The shooting fuelled heightened anxiety for families in already nervous suburbs. “This community is in a state of fear,” said Montgomery County Executive Douglas Duncan. “We are outraged that someone would do this to our loved ones and our neighbours.”

Parents were urged to escort their children to school today and volunteer on safety patrols after a 13-year-old was shot as his aunt dropped him off at Benjamin Tasker Middle School.

The boy was in critical but stable condition at Children’s Hospital in Washington after the bullet entered his abdomen and chest. Doctors said they were optimistic he would survive.

“All of our victims have been innocent and defenceless, but now we’re stepping over the line,”

Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose said, tears streaming down his face. “Shooting a kid – it’s getting to be really, really personal now.”

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.

The sniper has shot eight people since Wednesday, killing six police have discerned no pattern among the victims. One died on a Washington street, the others within five miles of each other in Maryland’s Montgomery County.

The latest attack 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. Police have spoken of a single sniper, but have not ruled out the possibility that more than one person is involved.

President George Bush denounced the attacks as ”cowardly and senseless acts of violence” and ordered FBI profiling experts and ballistics analysts to assist local police.

Police and federal agents searched the grounds around Benjamin Tasker, sorted through thousands of tips, pored over maps and put together a psychological profile to hunt down the sniper.

All the victims were shot in public places: the boy outside school, two at gas stations, two in parking lots, another outside a post office, another as he mowed the grass and the eighth on a street coner.

Ballistics evidence also linked the Maryland killings with the wounding of a 43-year-old woman on Friday. She was shot in the back in a car park in Fredericksburg, Virginia, 50 miles from yesterday’s attack.