Washington sniper's 9th victim

2002-10-15 20:30

Falls Church, Virginia - Ballistic evidence conclusively links the death of a woman shot in the head in a suburban parking lot with eight other killings by a Washington-area sniper, authorities said on Tuesday.

Linda Franklin (47) was shot on Monday night as she and her husband loaded packages into their car outside the Seven Corners shopping centre, Fairfax county police chief Tom Manger said.

Some witnesses had given police license plate numbers of vehicles seen leaving the scene, he said. He gave few details, but it was clear that witnesses gave investigators more information than on any of the other shootings.

"There was some additional information that we were able to get from last night's case, and I am confident that that information is going to lead us to an arrest in the case," he said.

Monday's killing happened at one of northern Virginia's busiest intersections, where major arteries come together to form seven corners. Virginia state police said the van was last seen travelling east from Falls Church. Two interstate highways are nearby.

Possible description?

Police closed highways around Falls Church, about 16km west of Washington, after the shooting and said they were on the look-out for a Chevrolet Astro van that had a burnt-out left rear tail light and also had a chrome ladder on its roof. The highways were reopened in time for rush hour.

"There are a fair number of ways to leave the area," Manger said.

The shooting spree that has terrorised residents in the Washington area began on October 2 in Montgomery County, Maryland. With Monday's shooting, the toll has grown to nine people killed and two seriously wounded in Maryland, Virginia and the district of Columbia.

"Ballistic evidence has conclusively linked this case to the other murders in the area," Manger said.

Montgomery county police chief Charles Moose, who is leading the task force investing the shootings, was at the scene of the latest shooting.

Manger declined to confirm reports about a specific description of a possible suspect, saying only that several people contacted police after the shooting and that investigators were still interviewing them.

'This is brazen'

Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI profiler who lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia, said the location set the slaying apart from the others. "This is not bold, this is brazen," he said. "It's a much more highly congested area, even under the cover of darkness."

The victim was felled by a single shot about 21:15 as she stood in the parking lot of the blocks-long shopping centre. All the other deaths in the sniper spree were also caused by one shot.

Police scoured the parking lot for evidence and interviewed witnesses early on Tuesday. There were a number of people in the parking lot when the shooting occurred.

Shopper Raymond Massas said he "heard one shot. Not very loud, like a snap. After that I heard people start panicking."

Two police helicopters circled the scene.

Many schools in the region were under lockdown on Monday, meaning outdoor recess and physical education classes were cancelled and students were kept indoors all day. One of the sniper's targets was a 13-year-old boy who was wounded outside his school in Maryland. - Sapa-AP

- SAPA