A fatal shooting at a gasoline station was "conclusively linked" to nine other sniper attacks in the Washington area, police said today citing ballistics evidence, bringing the elusive killer's toll to eight dead and two injured.
"Ballistics evidence has conclusively linked the shooting in Spotsylvania to the other shootings in DC and Montgomery County," said Major Howard Smith of the Spotsylvania County police. That evidence was analyzed by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, he said.
Kenneth Bridges, 53, a businessman and father of six on the road from Philadelphia, was killed yesterday at an Exxon gasoline station near a busy interstate highway in Virginia.
The first five sniper shootings occurred in a bloody 15-hour spree that began on October 2nd in Montgomery County, Maryland, a northern suburb of Washington, DC.
In addition to the Montgomery County shootings, sniper attacks also killed one man in Washington DC and another in Virginia. The sniper wounded a woman in Virginia and a 13-year-old boy outside his school in Prince George's County in Maryland.
The killings have unnerved residents in the capital and its usually tranquil suburbs, who are still reeling from the September 11th attacks on the Pentagon and the anthrax letters sent soon afterward. High school football games were canceled on Friday throughout the region, as were many outdoor activities.