A citizenry on edge from sniper shootings that have killed six people in the Washington area in recent days grew even more anxious Monday after a 13-year-old boy was shot in the chest while entering his middle school in the morning, leaving him in critical condition.
The shooting, the eighth such attack, raised the level of horror and urgency surrounding the case, as a skilled gunman who has been targeting individuals at random turned his fire on the young.
“Someone is so mean-spirited that they shot a child,” said Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose, visibly shaken. “All of our victims have been innocent, have been defenseless. But now, we’re stepping over the line. Our children don’t deserve this.”
Ballistics tests of a bullet fragment taken from the boy confirmed that he’d been shot by the same sniper who killed six Washington-area residents last week as they pumped gas, mowed grass and performed other routine chores. Later in the day a man was shot in the northeast section of Washington, although that shooting has not been linked to the others.
Parents were seen running toward the school to retrieve their children after the boy was shot at Benjamin Tasker Middle School. Helicopters droned overhead and police blocked roads near the school, as law-enforcement officers swept the area in search of the shooter.
Throughout the Washington area, schools were suddenly surrounded by police officers–joined by members of the U.S. Secret Service, who normally guard the president or foreign heads of state.
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Montgomery County and Prince George’s County schools in suburban Washington were put on “code blue,” meaning no outdoor activities took place and parents had to show identification to pick up their children.
Moose encouraged school officials to hold their classes in spite of the terror incited by the day’s events. He also implored parents to talk to their children to help them understand what has been going on and try to put them at ease.
Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan, receiving word of the school shooting as he was leaving the funeral of one of the earlier victims, called it “very frightening news.” He added, “We are angry and we are outraged that someone would do this to our loved ones and to our neighbors.”
Moose said he sent a letter to Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft formally requesting federal assistance in the investigation, saying he wanted to ratchet up the level of support from federal officials.
President Bush added his voice Monday, issuing a statement of sympathy for the victims. “In recent days we have witnessed a series of cowardly and senseless acts of violence in the greater Washington area,” Bush said. “Laura and I send our thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families.”
In addition to the FBI and other federal agents working on the case, Bush said he has directed the federal government to provide counseling and other services to the students, teachers and families affected by the latest shooting.
The targeting of a child on his way to school represented the ultimate escalation in the killer’s effort to terrorize the public, said a former top psychological profiler for the FBI.
“One of the last vestiges of safety and security is our schools,” said Clinton Van Zandt, who now runs a suburban Washington consulting group. “He is trying to deprive us of the safety and security that we feel in our communities.”
Sniper `on a mission’
FBI officials said they had no reason to believe an Al Qaeda-style terrorist was involved, though authorities said the spree represented its own brand of terror for those living in the areas where the shootings occurred.
Because the killer, or killers, seemed to be getting enjoyment from producing that panic, Van Zandt and another former top FBI profiler, Robert Ressler, predicted the shootings would not stop until the perpetrator is caught.
“This is a man on a mission,” Van Zandt said. “Every time he points that rifle and pulls the trigger, he is making a conscious choice. He likes it, he enjoys it. It’s emotional Viagra for him.”
He added, “For that moment in time, you are godlike. You make the decision who lives and who dies, and for a psychopath like this, there is no stronger aphrodisiac.”
Ressler, too, said the killer or killers were on “the ultimate power trip,” and that more shootings would likely follow with the same regularity, the same randomness–and even the same weapon.
“They want to be connected, because this is an ego trip,” Ressler said. “They are not trying to fool the police. They want the connections to be made.”
The FBI has prepared a psychological profile of the killer for police working on the case. Police also are working from a “geographical profile” put together by investigators in an attempt to determine a narrow area in which the sniper might live and where he might strike.
Since Thursday, police have been looking for one or two men in a white box truck described by a witness to one of the shootings. Police are asking citizens for help with any information they might have, but would not release details of the psychological or geographical profiles.
Mike Bouchard, an agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said police deployed trained dogs to the scene of the school shooting to sniff for gunshot residue in an effort to pinpoint where the killer might have been stationed.
“We are just as concerned, even more concerned now that it’s stooped to the level of shooting children,” Bouchard said.
Boy doing satisfactorily
Dr. Martin Eichelberger, a pediatric surgeon at Children’s Hospital in Washington where the 13-year-old was taken for treatment, said the boy was doing satisfactorily after a two- to three-hour surgery.
The bullet, which remained lodged in the boy’s right side, injured his spleen, stomach, pancreas, lung and diaphragm, Eichelberger said. Doctors “made a special effort” to remove a bullet fragment from the boy in order to assist police in their investigation, he said.
The ammunition used in the attacks has consistently been a .223 slug, described by FBI agents last week as a small bullet designed to do “significant damage.”
Few in the Washington area were talking of anything but the shooting Monday. Tiffany Clay and Eric Denhardt, both 27, sat outside a few miles from the middle school where the shooting occurred, discussing the gun attacks.
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“We’re just kind of looking around, making sure there are no box trucks around,” Clay said.
Denhardt said while it’s sad for anyone to be victimized like this, he had taken some solace in the fact that the sniper had seemed to have moved on from the Maryland area. The latest shooting reignited fears that the area might not be safe.
“Hopefully he’ll make a mistake soon, and they’ll catch him,” Denhardt said. “It’s a crazy world nowadays, and unfortunately it seems to be getting crazier.”