Not all shattered windows from sniper - Drivers rattled, but no bullets found; cold might be culprit
Friday, January 30, 2004 - Robert Ruth and Bruce Cadwallader
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Columbus Police detective Mark Frontera examines the window of a sport-utility vehicle that was shattered along I-70. The sniper task force found no evidence the damage was from a bullet.
The sport-utility vehicle was westbound on I-70 near Hague Avenue yesterday morning when the driver heard the whistling noise.
Suddenly, the driver’s-side window shattered next to Keith McCauley, who pulled his GMC Yukon to the side of the road.
"My first reaction was just to get off the freeway," said McCauley, who lives on the South Side. "My thoughts then turned to the 270 case."
He called authorities. Three police cruisers and members of the Outerbelt sniper task force hurried to the scene.
They found no slug inside the Yukon or hole where a bullet might have exited the vehicle. Whatever blew out the window left no clues.
"We found no ballistic evidence to indicate a gunshot," said Timothy Grimm, a Columbus police detective assigned to the task force. "It must have been due to the cold. It happens all the time. When it gets cold like this, it (glass) does weird things."
McCauley was relieved he wasn’t the 21 st victim of a sniper. "They didn’t find a bullet," he said. "That’s good news, isn’t it? I’ll go with whatever he (Grimm) says because he’s the professional."
Although the explanation might not reassure some motorists, Franklin County Sheriff Jim Karnes said task force investigators must prioritize incidents like McCauley’s and the 3,640 tips they have received so far. Those that are most promising are put at the top of the list.
"If it doesn’t fit the mold, it doesn’t fit the mold," Karnes said of an incident. "We can’t stretch it."
That was the conclusion State Highway Patrol troopers reached Jan. 14 when a window shattered in Stephen Gleeson’s minivan as he drove along Rt. 23 north of Circleville.
Gleeson, an examiner with the Ohio Financial Institutions Division, was on his way home from Ironton when he heard a whistling sound in his 1995 Ford Windstar and realized a side window behind him had shattered.
Even more unnerving, a passenger in a sedan that had just passed his northbound minivan was staring at him, he said.
Gleeson, 47, also immediately thought he might be the latest Outerbelt shooting victim. Shaken, he drove 3 miles to a patrol post. There, two troopers searched the vehicle but could find nothing suspicious.
"At first, I was relieved and pretty much put it out of my mind," Gleeson recalled. After all, the 20 incidents linked to the serial sniper had been confined to the Outerbelt and nearby neighborhoods, he figured. Circleville is about 15 miles south of I-270.
But eight days later, someone fired a shot from the Lambert Road overpass in Pleasant Township that struck a car on I-71. That shooting was 8 miles south of the Outerbelt, the southernmost shooting scene being investigated.
"When that happened, it got me thinking again," Gleeson said. "What happened to me was a whole set of coincidences and circumstances that are pretty peculiar."
Karnes doesn’t blame motorists for fearing the worst, and he encourages them to continue calling. Even the most outwardly insignificant incident might prove to be "the piece of evidence we need to break this case."
But motorists and tipsters also must realize that investigators must make difficult decisions in developing their priority list. Separating the wheat from the chaff "sometimes can be a very tough call," Karnes acknowledged.
How are such decisions made? "They rely on a combination of experience, training and many other factors," he said.
During his 16 years repairing automobile windows, Gary Canter has seen all types of broken glass.
The coordinator for Harrs Auto Glass, 2630 Parsons Ave., said it’s unusual for side and rear windows to break for no apparent reason.
When a window does break in cold weather, it’s most often the rear window on extremely bitter days when a driver activates the rear defroster, he said. The heat can shatter the cold window.
The glass in the side windows of older vehicles can become slightly loose and shatter, Canter said. Or a side window can break when a pebble or other object the driver doesn’t see bounces off it. Those explanations do little to ease Gleeson’s concerns. No investigators have followed up by interviewing him, he said. "I’m not mad at anybody . . . but it’s a little odd. They seem blase."