US: Residents of Montgomery County, Maryland, have always regarded their area as one of the safest places in the United States. A high proportion of Washington's diplomats, journalists and government officials live there. The crime rate is low. Motorists generally obey the 30 mph speed limits on leafy suburban roads. On Sunday afternoons people like to browse in the malls, sip coffee in the giant Borders book store, or clean their cars at a local garage.Now residents are hesitating even to go to the store for essentials, writes Conor O'Clery, North America Editor
The deadly sniper who picked off five people at random in the Washington suburb was still loose yesterday and the police admitted they had no real clue as to his identity.
The killer also drove 50 miles south to Spotsylvania County in Virginia on Friday, and shot and seriously injured a 43-year-old woman putting shopping in her car. The bullet matched the ammunition that killed four of the five victims in Montgomery County: one shot while vacuuming her minivan at a Shell gas station; one filling his taxi at a Mobil station; one walking from a grocery store; one mowing a lawn, and one sitting on a bench.
The shooting dead of a 72-year-old pedestrian on a street corner in Washington is not thought to have been related. The attacks do not seem to have a racial motive: two of the victims were white, two African American, one Indian, and one Hispanic. Each victim was shot once from a distance with a single high-powered .223-calibre rifle. Police yesterday guarded the Michael's chain of craft stores in the area as the shooting in Virginia was outside a Michael's store, and the window of another Michael's was shot out on Wednesday.
Police said they were following up on about 800 credible tips. At St Mary's Catholic Church in Rockville on Saturday, nearly 1,000 people lit candles in a ceremony for the victims while Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, archbishop of Washington, urged them to not change their daily routines.