Sniper has D.C. feeling like the hunted
Posted on 10/13/2002 6:13:29 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Sniper has D.C. feeling like the hunted
10/13/2002
WASHINGTON - The mundane task of pumping gas has suddenly become an act of daring, an exercise in evasion.
No longer does one stand idly, nozzle in hand, while the tank fills. The 10 sniper shootings since Oct. 2 - four at gas stations - have changed all that. He, or they, could be lurking in the woods, preparing to fell yet another self-service customer. Eight people have been gunned down; two wounded.
Now the prudent patron bursts from the driver's seat, rams the nozzle into the tank, sets it on automatic fill and slips back into the vehicle. Or performs contortions outside - ducking, weaving, shuffling - that would have drawn curious stares a mere two weeks ago.
Such has everyday life been transformed for the 5 million people in the Washington area. Each white commercial van - the shooter or shooters' possible means of transportation - gets a second look, or a third. Schools are locked down, football and soccer games postponed.
| LIVES CUT DOWN | |
|
Holly Gross, a stay-at-home mother from Potomac, Md., said she stops only at full-service gas stations and no longer takes her 3-year-old son, Jake, with her when she runs errands.
"My son was invited to Chuck E. Cheese the other day, and I said, 'No way,' because it's in a strip mall," Ms. Gross said. "Everywhere you go, you are just so much more conscious of your surroundings. You run into the store or wherever you have to go. You don't want to be standing still because that's when this guy seems to be hitting people."
During the first few days, it seemed the paranoia would be confined to the sections of Montgomery County, Md., where the initial shootings had taken place. No more.
Now everyone feels vulnerable. People have been killed or wounded at gas stations and a strip shopping center in Virginia, on a street corner in Washington and outside a middle school in Prince George's County, Md.
One understands, on some level, how an antelope must feel at a watering hole on the Serengeti. It's the unsettling sensation of being watched, hunted.
"I haven't been to the grocery store in a week because of this," said Stacy Starr, a 33-year-old legal secretary and mother of two from Woodbridge, Va. The other night, her fiancé refused to let her gas up her car and did it himself.
"I think at this point, I'm beyond fear," Ms. Starr said. "I'm just irritated that this has disrupted my life."
Brian Stansbury, a 24-year-old lawyer who moved to Washington from Houston a year ago, finds himself scanning rooftops when he goes to the ATM. "I make sure I keep moving," he said.
That's part of the new D.C. area mantra: Keep moving. Don't linger on the busy corner. Use the drive-through.
Some say they are avoiding malls and restaurants. Pizza delivery outlets report a surge in business.
On Friday, already-skittish residents learned of another gas station shooting near Fredericksburg, Va. - this one as a state trooper worked a traffic accident nearby. The audacity of the crime, and the spectacle of police stops on northbound Interstate 95, only added to the tension.
"I have to put gas in my car," said 24-year-old Almaz Yousph, who works in an Alexandria, Va., coffee shop. "I'm thinking, 'Should I do it at night or during the day?' I don't know what to do. I'm very scared. Everybody's very scared."
Carly Glazier, a stay-at-home mother from Bethesda, Md., ruefully chronicled the self-protection techniques she and others are using.
After hearing about Friday's killing in Virginia, Ms. Glazier promptly drove to a gas station near her home, reasoning that the sniper could not cover 30-plus miles so quickly.
"The first thing I thought ... was that I should go buy gas because he's not right here," Ms. Glazier said. "Which is horrible to say. He's been averaging one [shooting] every other day or so. You kind of want to wait to find out where that one is to find out if you are safe for the day."
Nichole Sumrell, a junior at Lee High School in Fairfax County, Va., described an eerie lockdown that went into effect after Friday's shooting.
"They locked all the doors to the school and told every teacher to lock the classroom doors," Ms. Sumrell said. "They had teachers sitting at all the doors, and they had security people around the front of the school and everything."
Sports teams have been practicing in the Lee High gym, she said, and sporting events and other after-school activities have been canceled in recent days - a process repeated at schools throughout the region.
On Wednesday evening, Alisa Rogers and her husband, Philip, drove past the Battlefield Sunoco station near Manassas, Va., as was their habit. When they got home, they were aghast to learn that they had missed the fatal shooting of Sunoco customer Dean Meyers by 30 minutes.
"We feel it's very close to home," said Ms. Rogers, who runs a small research-and-development firm near Manassas Regional Airport with her husband. "All of us are pretty afraid to get gas, afraid to drive home."
On Friday, the Rogerses and their six employees were clustered around the office TV.
"We're all on edge," Ms. Rogers said.
And that means moving, as Shelley Davis, of Chevy Chase, Md., learned in a recent TV segment on reducing one's risk.
"When I walk across parking lots, I walk very fast and I zigzag," she said.
Her husband, attorney Thomas Hylden, confessed to hiding behind gas pumps while he fills up.
Mr. Hylden's younger brother, Rick, and his wife, Marie, were visiting from Plano and seemed somewhat less fearful.
"We're not worried about being shot while being tourists," Rick Hylden said.
As they visited downtown Washington, his wife noted, "there are tons of people on the street. The museum was full."
Ms. Davis, however, said she has made significant changes in her routine - and the routines of her three teenagers. Thirteen-year-old Katherine, for example, has been forbidden to walk to the school bus stop.
"I'm kind of paralyzed by this whole thing," Ms. Davis said. "It's kind of just taken over my life, hiding from this guy."
Michelle Mittelstadt, Richard Whittle, Steve Peoples, Jim Fry, Carolyn Presutti and John Sumrell of the Belo Capital Bureau contributed to this report.
Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my General Interest ping list!. . .don't be shy. 
Or moose. I wonder if people in the DC area are happy with the rampant affirmative action at their police departments.
He is first and last a terrorist; just another person who has chosen the lowest of roads for his personal empowerment.
. . .actually had not thought of them at all; but yes, cannot be easy.
Do think about how it must be in the mind of every person, stopping for gasoline that this could happen, and yet feeling somewhat safe and confident that it would not happen to them and then. . .
"The first thing I thought ... was that I should go buy gas because he's not right here," Ms. Glazier said. "Which is horrible to say..."
Why is it 'horrible' to describe a field expedient method for reducing the odds of being shot by a sniper?
She has stumbled onto a reasonably good method for reducing the likelihood of being attacked, and she regards her reporting of it as a "...horrible thing to say...".
I'd bet the rent that she's a liberal, and that she's wracked with a mindless, free floating guilt about any number of advantages or lucky breaks that she enjoys.
Hey Glazier... If what you're doing prompts you to use a word like 'horrible' to describe it, you MUST stop doing it now. It's simply not fair for you to employ a method that puts you at a competitive advantage over others like this.
Pin a target on your blouse and stand somewhere very still in that urban hell-hole you live in, for as long as you can, every day.
Only in this way will you be able to take a first step toward purging yourself of the horrible horrible-ness of the unfair advantage you have stolen from the people.
Exactly!
She's not content to be clever, or cunning enough to imitate someone else who is...
She has to run her village idiot's free-floating guilt up the flagpole for all to see.
She appears to be a classic example of the puerile weakness that has manifested itself in the human gene pool after we killed off all of the saber-toothed tigers and invented medicine... There are too many folks reaching adulthood that nature had tagged for culling in childhood.
Do think about how it must be in the mind of every person, stopping for gasoline that this could happen, and yet feeling somewhat safe and confident that it would not happen to them and then. . .
I have a friend (Mike) who dropped his pooch off at my place Friday night and he and his wife and daughter were heading out for Virginia for a 4 day trip. We talked about this nutcase. Mike said that they would rent a car and make sure it's filled up at the airport and they weren't going to be driving more than the ~300 miles that would take them. He was gonna pay the high cost at the airport for them to fill it up when he drops the car off. I guess with a wife and daughter I couldn't blame him. But they rake you over the coals at airports for gas fillups, don't they? (Main point being, this has gotta be on everyone's mind in the Beltway area).
I would feel the same way as this lady......
..that, by saying this, she was admitting to taking advantage of someone else's misfortune.
We all are totally unprepared to deal with this kind of situation & don't know, until it happens, what we will think or how we will react.
Cut her some slack, OK.
And I would appreciate NOT getting flamed for my opinion in support of her statement.
Yep. When I read the article, and read that sentence about the antelope, that struck me in a big way, too. That's why I picked it for the subtitle. Pretty scary.....
Yes...
Based on the sentiments you've expressed, I think it's accurate to say that we probably disagree with each other right down to the molecular level.
”…We all are totally unprepared to deal with this kind of situation & don't know, until it happens, what we will think or how we will react…”
You need to learn to speak for yourself. There are those for whom this statement, and the wind-blown philosophy it represents, is antithetical to their way of life.
”…Cut her some slack, OK…”
This remark convinces me that you aren’t even close to getting the point. Have yourself a great day.
"I"....would probably do exactly what this lady is doing, and thinking the killer is in the next county, run my errand, get my groceries or gas or whatever.
But if someone interviewed "ME", "I" would voice a tiny bit of regret that life had taken such a turn and "I" had to resort to this kind of subterfuge.
"I" am probably more prepared than you seem to give me credit for----although "I" still think it would be difficult to absolutely know how "I" would react in such an emergency.
There....is that better.
Yes it is.
You would share this potentially life saving tactic with your family members and friends though...
Right?
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