One dead in US sniper shooting

Investigators in Indiana scoured hundreds of miles of highway for clues to a killer after two sets of sniper attacks within hours of each other left one man dead and another wounded.

A day after the attacks, police were still trying to identify potential suspects and searching for any witnesses who might have seen the gunman.

Electronic highway signs across the state flashed a message to motorists this morning: “Report suspicious overpass activities – call police.”

Near the shooting sites, state Police asked businesses for surveillance video from the hours surrounding yesterday morning’s attacks, and they asked motorists who had been through the Seymour area in the past week to check their vehicles for bullet holes.

Sgt Jerry Goodin said investigators were comparing bullet fragments to determine if the two sets of attacks, about 100 miles apart on two different highways, were related.

“We’re keeping an open mind,” Goodin said. “Wherever they’re from, we’re going to go after them.”

The first bullet killed Jerry Ross, 40, of New Albany as he rode in a pick-up truck on Interstate 65 near Seymour, about 50 miles south of Indianapolis, authorities said.

As state police were investigating, the Seymour Police Department received a call from a petrol station off the Interstate reporting a second shooting.

The driver of the second pick-up, Brandon Bonnesen, said he and Robert John Otto Hartl, 25, were driving to Florida for construction work when he heard a loud noise.

“I cussed a little bit and looked at my friend. He was all bent over and I said: ‘You all right?’ He said: ‘I’m OK, keep going’,” Bonnesen said.

The bullet had grazed Hartl’s head near his left ear, Bonnesen said.

Police closed a 15-mile stretch of I-65 near Seymour after the shootings. The north-south highway runs north-south through Indiana and is heavily travelled at all hours. It is the most direct route between Chicago and the South.

About two hours after the shootings in southern Indiana, bullets struck two vehicles about 100 miles to the northeast on Interstate 69. No one was injured in those shootings.

Goodin said authorities were considering the shootings to be linked “until proven otherwise”.

The highway attacks were reminiscent of a series of random shootings that killed one person and terrorised the Columbus, Ohio, area in late 2003 and early 2004. Charles McCoy Jr was arrested in March 2004 and was sentenced to 27 years in prison after pleading guilty.