THE US: It strains credibility. For days the full resources of the Washington area police have been marshalled to search for a white van in their frustrated investigation into the deadly suburban sniper.
Yet on Monday evening at Falls Church, Virginia, the killer coldly shot Ms Linda Franklin (47) in the head at a busy shopping mall and, according to witnesses, drove off into the night in a white van with a defective rear light. Police appeared within minutes and used a "swarming strategy" to stop traffic and block exit ramps on main roads running through the Washington suburb. But there was no trace of the sniper who has killed nine people and injured two over two terror-filled weeks.
Yesterday as police struggled to explain their failure, the Pentagon announced it was providing reconnaissance planes and other surveillance equipment to help in the manhunt. The latest victim was loading her red convertible with purchases from the Home Depot store at the Seven Corners Shopping Centre when the shot rang out at 9.15 p.m. Ms Franklin, whose husband was beside her, was an intelligence analyst at the FBI in a section dealing with threats against major structures and cyber networks. The mother of two grown-up children, and a survivor of breast cancer, is the latest victim of a sniper whose random targets span several ethnic groups and range in age from 15 to 72.
As happened, because the sniper took the weekend off, the last killing had been 84 hours earlier. Police said they were on the lookout for a light-coloured Chevrolet Astro van or a Ford Econoline van with a burned-out left rear tail light and a chrome ladder rack. His brazen act may lead to his discovery, as he left more clues in Falls Church than elsewhere.
Several people saw and heard the shooting of Ms Franklin and gave details of the license plates on vehicles seen leaving the scene. A salesman at Home Depot said his store locked the doors immediately and that "everyone was crying".
Virginia State Police said the van was last seen travelling east on Route 50. This is the fourth time a white van has been reported at the scene of a sniper shooting: one theory police are working on is that the killer is now waiting for a white van to drive by before shooting from his high-powered rifle. "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," police chief Tom Manger of Fairfax County police said. The killing occurred closer to the DC metropolitan area than three shootings last week that took place in less densely populated Bowie, Spotsylvania County and Prince William County.