Authorities on Friday linked a Sept. 14 shooting outside a Silver Spring, Md., liquor store to the two suspects in the string of deadly sniper attacks, putting the Army veteran and his teenage companion in the Washington area nearly three weeks earlier than previously known.
The shooting wounded a 22-year-old clerk, Rupinder Oberoi, as he helped lock up the store, and stretched the number of shooting episodes police have tied to the sniper suspects to 17, including 13 killed and five injured in five states and Washington.
No charges have been filed yet in the liquor store shooting.
Authorities continue examining other unsolved crimes in retracing the trail of John Allen Muhammad, 41, and John Lee Malvo, 17, as they traveled from the West Coast to the Washington area, to the Gulf Coast and back to the nation’s capital.
On Thursday, police in Baton Rouge, La., filed murder charges against the two suspectsin connection with a Sept. 23 killing of a beauty shop worker.
Officer Derek Baliles, a police spokesman in Montgomery County, Md., said that before the connection to the Silver Spring shooting, “as far as we knew they showed up [in the Washington region] on maybe the 2nd of October,” he said.
“I would not be surprised if there are more links made in the area as they look carefully at the evidence that is building and providing a timeline,” Baliles said.
Ballistics evidence comparing the Silver Spring shooting to the sniper attacks was ruled inconclusive weeks ago, but investigators pieced the case together after looking at “the similarity of circumstances, witness information and evidence that confirms the vehicle was in the Washington metro area on the day of the shooting,” Baliles said.
He declined to offer details of the evidence but said more cases are falling into place because the description of the two suspects is unique. Typically, criminal partners are close in age, while “here, we have two skinny guys with quite an age difference, and that tends to stand out in people’s memories,” Baliles said.
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Muhammad and Malvo have been in federal custody since their arrest Oct. 24.
Prosecutors in Virginia and Maryland have filed murder charges in the sniper slayings against Muhammad and Malvo and said they would try Malvo as an adult. The two also face state murder charges in two fatal robberies–one on Sept. 21 in Montgomery, Ala., and the Sept. 23 killing in Baton Rouge. They are also suspects in a February killing in Tacoma, Wash.
Authorities have not detailed Malvo’s alleged role in the sniper attacks. ABC News has aired audio of a 911 call placed during the sniper investigation and identified the caller as Malvo.
“Good morning. Don’t say anything, just listen,” said the caller, who had an apparent Jamaican accent. “We are the people that are causing the killing in your area. Look on the tarot card. It says, `Call me God.’ Do not release the threat.”
In Montgomery, Ala., where a robbery case helped lead investigators to Muhammad and Malvo, questions remained Friday.
But Police Chief John Wilson said Friday that a stolen handgun has been found near the scene of the robbery that fits the make and model of a weapon believed to have been used in the crime, which left one woman dead and another injured, The Associated Press reported.