Are we assuming there is a vehicle involved in close vicinity??? Do we really know the shots were made from a vehicle???
It sure would be easier to walk away in the confusion...Nobody would notice someone running or walking away..it would be a normal reaction.
I'm glad to see that folks are thinking about these shootings beyond what the news and police and county executive, etc. are reporting. The information they are giving out does not satisfy all the questions I have, especially as I know the area where the cluster of shootings occurred fairly well.
The Michaels, Mobil, car dealer and Leisure World locations are all pretty open spaces, with large expanses of greenspace (grass, stands of trees, pet and people cemetaries, golf course property) facing them from across the roadways. The Shell station is in a little more difficult to describe location, with mostly commercial locations all around, but it does have one side that is at a higher elevation than locations behind it. The Shoppers store (formerly a Hechingers store) is in unrestricted sightline of the Wheaton/Glenmont station of the Montgomery County Police Department; and it also has a direct line to another area of tree cover - although that is a parking lot for some garden apartments, which are adjacent to a regional park and nature center.
In all those locations there is good cover available within shooting range, and the cover area is not far at all from well maintained roads, where one could easily access a vehicle for anonymous escape.
So, while I am not obsessing on the whole thing, I do have to wonder if the police chief and others are misleading the public for some reason (and not necessarily ill-intended) regarding the white Isuzu box truck. My instincts are telling me the truck is not a part of the story. But my instincts have been wrong before.
As to the type of firearm used, I'm not too knowledgeable, but .223 "projectile" is used by more than just hunters of 4-legged prey. It's pretty common round for reaching out and touching things. And alQaida and other Islamist terrorist types are very likely to have trained with rifles that use the round.
so, the shooter has been narrowed down to include: competitive shooters, hunters, military, police, terrorists. Narrowed that right down, didn't I?
The one thing that is certain is that I am very pissed-off by what has happened, and I want the shooter found and killed. And I want all the terrorists-in-training/hiding in the US to be hunted down by the authorities; and I frighten myself when I find myself thinking that I want them to resist when caught so that we won't have to waste taxpayer dollars on a trial.
I ponder all this ugliness today, 15years and 10 hours after I celebrated the birth of my beautiful baby girl, which probably explains why I want anyone who threatens my kids' lives (as these shootings have done) to be killed without mercy.