2008 Woodie Awards
Highway shootings leave residents and motorists on edge
By: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Issue date: 3/28/08 Section: Nation
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. - Gunfire that struck several vehicles and injured two people along a stretch of mountain highway had motorists and police on edge yesterday in a region where memories of the deadly Beltway snipers still haven't faded.
Authorities were seeking at least two people suspected of firing shots the night before that hit two cars, a van, a tractor-trailer and an unoccupied dump truck on Interstate 64 just west of Charlottesville. Two people were injured, but not seriously.
Col. Steven Flaherty, the state police superintendent, would not characterize the shootings as the work of snipers, calling it "random firing."
And there were other differences from the sniper spree of nearly six years ago, including the fact that those attacks targeted people who were standing outside their cars.
Nevertheless, Flaherty conceded the 2002 attacks, in which 10 people were killed and three wounded in Maryland, the District of Columbia and northern Virginia, were on investigators' minds as they sought those behind yesterday's spree.
"It reminded us of a lot of emergencies we've had," said Flaherty, whose agency also dealt with last April's Virginia Tech shootings.
Residents, too, were mindful of the crimes of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, who were convicted in the 2002 shootings. Christy Lucado, who drives through the area on the way to work, said she immediately thought about the sniper shootings yesterday morning when a friend called and told her the news.
"I thought, well, Lord, my car's out in the driveway, my keys are in it and I'm up on the mountain by myself," said Lucado, who waits tables at Duner's restaurant in Ivy, near the exit where one of the latest shootings happened.
"We're talking the mountains up here, and the first thing you usually think of is drunk rednecks. But the fact they moved from one exit to another makes me think it wasn't just someone there shooting off their gun."
Police took a call from a driver whose vehicle was hit just after midnight. Three more occupied vehicles headed westbound were shot, one at an on-ramp at Ivy, the others at an overpass in the Afton area. An unoccupied Virginia Department of Transportation dump truck was targeted later, farther down the interstate.
Authorities were seeking at least two people suspected of firing shots the night before that hit two cars, a van, a tractor-trailer and an unoccupied dump truck on Interstate 64 just west of Charlottesville. Two people were injured, but not seriously.
Col. Steven Flaherty, the state police superintendent, would not characterize the shootings as the work of snipers, calling it "random firing."
And there were other differences from the sniper spree of nearly six years ago, including the fact that those attacks targeted people who were standing outside their cars.
Nevertheless, Flaherty conceded the 2002 attacks, in which 10 people were killed and three wounded in Maryland, the District of Columbia and northern Virginia, were on investigators' minds as they sought those behind yesterday's spree.
"It reminded us of a lot of emergencies we've had," said Flaherty, whose agency also dealt with last April's Virginia Tech shootings.
Residents, too, were mindful of the crimes of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, who were convicted in the 2002 shootings. Christy Lucado, who drives through the area on the way to work, said she immediately thought about the sniper shootings yesterday morning when a friend called and told her the news.
"I thought, well, Lord, my car's out in the driveway, my keys are in it and I'm up on the mountain by myself," said Lucado, who waits tables at Duner's restaurant in Ivy, near the exit where one of the latest shootings happened.
"We're talking the mountains up here, and the first thing you usually think of is drunk rednecks. But the fact they moved from one exit to another makes me think it wasn't just someone there shooting off their gun."
Police took a call from a driver whose vehicle was hit just after midnight. Three more occupied vehicles headed westbound were shot, one at an on-ramp at Ivy, the others at an overpass in the Afton area. An unoccupied Virginia Department of Transportation dump truck was targeted later, farther down the interstate.
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