US: Police around Washington DC yesterday mounted a massive hunt for one or more gunmen who killed five people going about their business in Montgomery County, Maryland, between Wednesday evening and yesterday morning.
All were picked off by a sniper firing single shots from a high-powered rifle.
The cold-blooded random murders caused near-panic in the middle-class dormitory area of the US capital which is the wealthiest country in Maryland.
Schools were "locked down" and outside activities cancelled while police searched for one or two suspects in a white box-like van with black lettering on the side.
The shootings happened within a period of 16 hours and apparently began when the window of a store at a shopping centre was shot out at 5.30 p.m. on Wednesday with a single shot.
Shortly after 6.04 p.m., a 55- year-old man was shot in the car park of a Wheaton grocery store. Police officers heard the shot and ran across the street but failed to spot the assailant. At 7.41 a.m., a man driving a lawnmower was shot dead on Rockville Pike in the White Flint area.
At 8.12 a.m., a male taxi-driver was shot dead with one round while putting petrol in his cab at a Mobil station in the Aspen Hill area. At about 8.37 a.m., a woman was shot in the head at a post office next to the Leisure World retirement community in Silver Spring.
At 9.58 a.m., a second woman was shot at a Shell gas station on Connecticut Avenue in Kensington as she vacuumed her van. Mechanics at the gas station said they heard the shot but did not see the gunman.
The shootings brought a new twist to the US record of mass killings with guns. In this case, each victim was felled by a single shot, police said, and none had been robbed. The victims appeared not to be connected with each other. Two were African-American, two were Hispanic and one was white.
The killer apparently picked a victim at random and then took his time to reload and drive off to look for more.
It was unclear whether the shots were fired from a vehicle or at what range. Ballistics tests to determine whether the same gun was used were pending, investigators said.
Several years ago in a similar incident, a group of men were arrested after shooting a woman driving a car on the Washington beltway. They said they had simply gone cruising around the highway to find somebody to shoot.
Several witnesses yesterday said they saw a white cargo van, possibly with damage at the back, leaving some of the shooting scenes.
Montgomery County schools cancelled all outdoor activities and locked down school buildings. No one was allowed to leave or enter school buildings unless parents called ahead to retrieve their children.
Police Chief Charles Moose asked residents not to panic, especially parents, whom he urged not to rush to schools.
In New York on Wednesday, police arrested a former police officer who held residents at bay for several hours in lower Manhattan as he fired randomly from a window. One woman was slightly injured.