Police probe link to petrol station shooting

Police hunting a sniper who has terrorised the Washington area were today searching for a white van spotted leaving the scene of a seventh murder.

Police were trying to determine if last night’s shooting at a petrol station in northern Virginia was linked to the sniper.

Dean Harold Meyers, 53, of Gaithersburg, Maryland, was gunned down moments after filling his tank.

Two men were seen in a white van shortly after the sniper murders began eight days ago in the Washington suburbs.

Kim Chinn, a Prince William County police spokeswoman, said today that the Virginia killing had not yet been definitely linked to the eight earlier sniper shootings, six of them fatal, since October 2.

“The assurance we can give the community is we are working as hard as we can,” Chinn said.

“We will not discuss how many times the victim was shot or where in the body he was shot at this time,” she said.

In all, six murders and two non-fatal shootings have been linked to the sniper in Washington, Maryland and Virginia.

A woman wounded in Virginia last week was released from the hospital on Tuesday. The wounded schoolboy, whom police have not identified, remained in a critical but stable condition today.

A tarot card with the words “Dear policeman, I am God” was found near a shell casing outside the school in Bowie, a source close to the investigation said.

Maryland investigators went to the scene of last night’s killing because of similarities with the previous shootings, and Virginia police were sharing information with them.

“We are certainly working the case with that (a possible link) in mind,” Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose said.

A Maryland witness told police he saw two men in a white truck or van leaving the scene of an earlier shooting outside a post office. Two of the Maryland shootings were at petrol stations.

“Everything is very similar,” Montgomery County Executive Douglas Duncan said. “Let’s hope this is not it.”

The shell recovered in Monday’s school shooting was a .223-calibre, the same kind of bullet that authorities believe was used in the earlier shootings.

It was the first casing found since the shootings began.

Michael Bouchard, an agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, would not say whether authorities had linked the casing to the attacks.

Moose would not comment when asked about the tarot card, and angrily suggested unapproved information had been leaked.

“I need to make sure I don’t do anything to hinder our ability to bring this person or these people into custody,” he said.

Investigators say the sniper, or snipers, fired from a distance with a high-powered hunting or military-style rifle.

All the earlier victims had been felled by a single bullet.

The “I am God” message left on the tarot card called the Death card was first reported by WUSA-TV and then by The Washington Post.

Police sources told the newspaper the items were found 150 yards from the school in a wooded area on matted grass, suggesting the gunman had lain in wait.

The Post today reported that the tarot card also contained a handwritten request from the sniper that it not be revealed to the media.

Some detectives had hoped that if they honoured the request, the sniper might communicate with investigators again, the newspaper quoted sources as saying.

Tarot cards, used mainly for fortunetelling, are believed to have been introduced into western Europe by Gypsies in the 15th century.

Many tarot enthusiasts say the Death card usually does not connote physical death, but instead portrays a symbolic change or transformation.