Posted on 10/05/2002 4:18:07 PM PDT by flamefront
Police across three US states were searching yesterday for a 33-year-old whitesupremacist from North Carolina who they believe may be linked to the shocking series of random killings that have terrorised the Washington area over the past few days.
According to a bulletin from the North Carolina office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, a man named Robert Gene Baker III was believed to be around the American capital armed with a handgun and a high-powered rifle, and should be considered extremely dangerous. The ATF said he was driving a white GMC truck with Maryland registration plates and heading south towards North Carolina.
That description dovetailed almost exactly with clues picked up by local police forces in Montgomery County, Maryland – where five of the seven shootings took place – and in the District of Columbia.
One of the very few eyewitnesses to emerge so far said he saw two men in a white truck speeding away from one of the crime scenes, and Charles Moose, the police chief in Montgomery County, has said he is working on the assumption that there is a driver as well as a marksman. Ballistics evidence, meanwhile, has shown that the perpetrators used high-intensity bullets of the sort used by hunters and soldiers – and which may be compatible with the weapon ascribed to Baker by the ATF.
Baker was described as a drug user affiliated with various militia and white supremacist groups. The agency said he was 5 ft 9in, had brown eyes and brown hair and sported tattoos on his back and both arms.
Police have mounted an intensive manhunt across the eastern seaboard but without much hard evidence to go on – even the white truck is not much of a clue, given that there are hundreds of thousands of them on American roads.
Six people have been killed and one other badly injured since Wednesday night, in what police officials have described as almost ghost-like sniper attacks.
The perpetrators appear to have chosen their targets without discrimination, picking on people as they went about their daily business. In each case, they fired from a discreet distance where they could not immediately be spotted, then vanished before anyone could pick up on their trail.
The latest attack, on Friday afternoon, took place outside a crafts store in Fredericksburg, Virginia, around 50 miles south of Washington – a location consistent with the ATF tip that Baker was heading south through Virginia to North Carolina. The victim of the Fredericksburg attack was loading her car with her purchases when she was shot in the back. Her condition was not immediately made known.
The investigation is in its very early stages and police have ruled nothing out. Baker has not been formally named as a suspect, and the authorities have no idea who the second man indicated by Chief Moose might be. Ballistics tests have linked only four of the seven shootings. The bullets from the Fredericksburg attack were still being analysed yesterday, while in the two other cases the ammunition had degraded too far to be identifiable.
Everyone is working on the assumption, however, that all seven attacks are the work of the same criminal or criminals. Chief Moose said it would be "very strange" if the unidentified bullets did not match. Speaking to reporters, he said the investigation was "one of the most complex cases I've been involved with".
"It could be military, it could be a hunter, it could be someone... who has an interest in weapons," he said, and appealed directly to the perpetrators: "Whoever is involved in this madness, rethink what you're doing. Turn yourself in. Surrender to law enforcement." Gunman kills Arab youth in France
Police in northern France were yesterday hunting a gunman who shot dead a 17-year-old of North African origin and wounded three others in two apparently racist attacks in Dunkirk.
The man, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap, fired one rifle shot from behind the wheel of a Nissan 4x4 through a cafe window on Friday night. He then shot at customers who ran out in panic, police said yesterday. Two of the wounded were of North African origin.
An hour later, he fired at a group of teenagers at another cafe, killing Mohamed Maghara, a youth of Moroccan descent. Daniel Ferey, deputy prefect in Dunkirk, called the shootings "premeditated and racist". About 200 police were searching for the gunman, believed to be in his 40s.
"We have no clues about him and he was not identified," Mr Ferey said. "The licence plates were covered. He was wearing a hunting jacket or a military outfit."
About half the residents of Grande-Synthe, the Dunkirk suburb where the youth was killed, are of North African Arab origin. Yesterday 300 people marched through the area in protest at the attacks.
The fact that someone (I doubt very much it was the FBI) is pushing the idea that this guy was a suspect can only harm the investigation. The reason being that there is no evidence at all to link him to these crimes from the information which has been published. It clearly is an attempt to slander conservative Southerners who are all "right wing militia nuts" in the eyes of the media. This kind of thing is extremely harmful to finding who the real killers are.
BTW just a couple of days ago, I heard a guy named Howard Morris as quoting Andy Griffith as saying "those damned Southerners" after the Kennedy assasination.
A criminal, maybe?
I think you are being hoplessly naive. I havn't seen anything but enthusiasm for catching the bad guys. What I have scene is sophisticated understanding of how the OldDominantLiberalMedia creates images to demonize white males. How we look to the average Mom in tennis-shoes has very little to do with what we do, and everything to do with how the OldDominantLiberalMedia sterotypes us.
Fortunately, this is changing as the OldDominantLiberalMedia is losing market share every day, and more and more people are relying on the internet for news. I don't watch television anymore. Why corrupt the data stream?
That is because we know there is an election upcoming in Maryland, and we've seen this all before. Some wacko shoots someone, and the D*mocrat running for office at the time uses the tragedy as an excuse to disarm law-abiding citizens.
"Where are the exclamations of hope that he is caught quickly? The calls to keep our eyes out? - The Amber alert mentality? Where are the attempts to help correct the media on what the proper terms for describing the weapons are? - They don't know, so tell them. We need to be helpful is all."
My grandfather was a police officer, and several of our best friends are police officers. When LEOs are working, we (my wife and I) try to stay out of their way. Hope is fine - but if I can't provide substantial help, I prefer to stay out of the way & let the LEOs do their job.
By the way, I own what some might describe as a .223 sniper rifle (it works great on rats). Do you think I should:
1) Ask my local law enforcement agency to stop by and check it out (even though I live over a thousand miles from the crime scenes), or;
2) Sell it, or;
3) Feel guilty, to make the Liberals and D*mocrats happy?
;>)
Lee Harvey Oswald was born in New Orleans. He was in fact a Southerner so I am surprised you have never heard him associated with the South. It is just the fact that his ideas were very unSouthern which never gets mentioned.
I don't think my filter is set too sensitive, in fact I don't even use one. As I said just a couple of days ago there was a program about the Andy Griffith show and one of the people interviewed went out of his way to comment on Griffith's having blamed the South for the assasination, of course the fact that Griffith was a Southerner was supposed to make the statement even stronger. He didn't bother to point out that if Griffith had made such a statement it was really stupid.
He's putting gas in their cars???!! Where did you hear that?
Just kidding.
I don't think anyone here doesn't want the sick people involved caught, tried and executed, no matter who it is. I hope it isn't someone who claims to support the Constitution, flies a Southern flag, homeschools his kids, claims to be a Christian, and reads the Bible, because then someone has given emotional ammunition to my enemies by associating himself with the worldview of me and many others. Of course, I hope its a Commie, or at least an atheist like Tim McVeigh. I think that's what's at work here - people here at FR know that a pathetic news source like the UK Independent would LOVE for it to be someone they can associate with us. But you're right, even if he (or they) is all those things I listed earlier, I hope they catch them, try them, and execute them for gunning down innocent people.
But to demonstrate how inaccurate this article is - the man is already in custody, and not a suspect. I would expect a white supremacist (what does it mean he was associated with a "militia?" Which is it?) to randomly shoot people, but it appears this is not the man. It IS interesting that they were looking for him, though. I wonder what the reasoning was.
THE BATF IS CORRUPT.
*TOTALLY UNVERIFIED SPECULATION by HOTD* One report hinted at a current or ex wife/girlfriend who phoned in a tip about her guy being capable of this.... Don't know if this is the same guy.
Who's to say that such was not the goal?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.