Posted on 01/23/2004 8:38:05 AM PST by flutters
Gunfire hit cars traveling on I-71 and I-270 yesterday. No one was injured.
A task force investigating the serial sniper is analyzing two shell casings found on an I-71 overpass after a motorist was fired on about 1 a.m.
If the incident is linked to the shooter, it will be the 20th and the most recent since a car was hit Jan. 11.
The bullet that hit Michael Thomas’ car appears to have ricocheted off the hood and cracked the windshield.
Last night, the task force was called to a shooting on the Far West Side, though authorities were trying to determine whether it might be an unrelated case of road rage.
Four bullet holes could clearly be seen on the passenger side of the white Chevy Suburban.
The Suburban’s driver, who asked that his name not be used, told police that the incident happened as he was getting off I-270 at the Georgesville Road exit about 9:45 p.m. to go to work at The Dispatch printing plant.
The man said the shots were fired from a late 1980s white Bonneville that he had passed on the Outerbelt at I-71. The driver of the Bonneville began tailgating him, at one point clipping his Suburban. The Bonneville followed him off the Georgesville ramp and pulled alongside, and shots were fired from it. The driver of the Suburban was uninjured.
Last night, the task force closed the Georgesville Road ramp off the Outerbelt for more than an hour to search for evidence. Authorities wouldn’t discuss the incident.
Yesterday’s early-morning shooting was about 8 miles south of I-270 and a mile from the Pickaway County line, the farthest south a possible sniper shooting has been reported.
Michael Thomas, 30, of the Far East Side, said he saw a person standing in the shadows in front of a parked car on the Lambert Road overpass of I-71 just after his car was shot. That happened about 12:45 a.m., as Thomas drove home from work.
The peaceful music coming from his car stereo was shattered first by a crunching noise, then by cracking glass.
"I didn’t see the weapon discharge. I saw a person stopped on the overpass. I heard a ping and it (the windshield) cracked. That’s when I realized someone shot at me," said Thomas, who braked to a crawl in the northbound lanes of I-71.
He said he saw the person on the overpass as he went under it: "I saw a figure in my rear-view mirror get back in his car and drive off eastbound."
He’s relieved he was driving alone because a passenger in his car might have been injured. The dent in his hood and the circular crack on his windshield directly line up with the passenger seat.
He drove another mile to the Rt. 665 exit, where he stopped at a United Dairy Farmers to call 911.
He said deputies confirmed that a bullet had hit his car and ricocheted into the window.
Thomas, the father of three who often listens to the Bible on tape as he drives, credited divine intervention with keeping him safe.
Task-force members later towed Thomas’ purple 1996 Chevy Corsica to a garage so they could search the engine block for bullet fragments.
Two shell casings found on the Lambert Road bridge are being analyzed, Franklin County Chief Deputy Steve Martin said.
The overpass is in a largely rural area between Grove City and Harrisburg, but the shooter risked being seen by residents of houses along Lambert Road. On the northeast side of the overpass is the Timberlake subdivision, a neighborhood of about 190 houses.
The bullet from the Jan. 11 shooting also hit a car’s hood and richocheted into its windshield, but authorities have not confirmed whether that shot, near the Lockbourne Road overpass on I-270, came from overhead.
Before that, the last link was made to two school buses hit in mid-December.
I wonder what constitutes 'high-powered shell casings'? .22mag? 9mm? 300 win mag?
Generally any rifle cartridge bigger than a 22LR
Really. They have casings with the caliber stamped on the back and refuse to tell the public what the shooter(s) are using. The only reason I can think of for this is to keep 100's or 1000's of tips from coming in and then having to check up on them, or maybee they have multiple calibers? It wouldn't be hard to toss some range brass around to throw off leads...Of course it also wouldn't be hard to tape a bag onto a reciever either.
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