Police today confirmed that the killing of a woman (47) in the car park of a Virginia shopping centre last night was by the Washington sniper who has now killed nine people over the past two weeks.
The gunman again eluded authorities, despite quick deployment of dozens of federal, state and local agents after the woman was shot in the head around 9.15 p.m. on Monday (2.15 a.m. today Irish time) as she and her husband loaded packages into their car outside a store in Falls Church, Virginia.
Unlike many of the other cases, it appeared authorities this time had a possible eyewitness to the shooting - the victim's husband. Police immediately said they were looking for a cream-colored Chevrolet Astro van - with a malfunctioning left tail-light - seen leaving the crime scene. A similar vehicle was seen leaving the scene of the other shootings.
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The sniper began a 15-hour killing spree on October 2nd and October 3rd that claimed five victims in Maryland's Montgomery County. Another victim was killed in Washington and two others in the southern suburbs of Virginia. The sniper has injured two people: a 13-year-old schoolboy in Bowie, Maryland, northeast of Washington, and a woman in Fredericksburg, Virginia, to the south.
In each instance, the victims were felled by a single shot and some witnesses at the shopping center reported hearing only one shot.
"A group of people walked right past the victim and two seconds later a shot went off," one eyewitness told ABC television. "There was screaming and yelling," another man said. A reward for information leading to the sniper's capture has reached $500,000.
Agencies