As someone who has been posting to FR nearly as long as I; you should KNOW that such generalizations do NOT apply to 'Freepers'...geez. :-)
Posted on 10/15/2002 1:40:44 PM PDT by Scalia Rules
Sniper Attack Yields Detailed Clues Tue Oct 15, 3:46 PM ET By ALLEN G. BREED, Associated Press Writer
FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) - An FBI (news - web sites) analyst who assessed terrorist threats was identified Tuesday as the ninth person killed by the Washington-area sniper, shot in the head in an attack investigators say has yielded the most detailed clues yet in the hunt for the gunman.
For the first time, witnesses were able to give information about license plates on vehicles seen fleeing the scene, including a light-colored Chevrolet Astro van with a burned-out rear taillight.
A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said another witness gave a description of a dark-skinned, possibly Hispanic or Middle Eastern, man in a white van.
"There was some additional information that we were able to get from last night's case, and I am confident that that information is going to lead us to an arrest in the case," Fairfax County Police Chief Tom Manger said.
Law enforcement sources said there were no indications the sniper targeted 47-year-old Linda Franklin because of her job. She worked for the FBI's Cyber-Crimes Division, created last year to focus on computer crimes as well as intellectual property cases.
Montgomery County (Md.) Police Chief Charles Moose, the head of the investigation, emphasized that Franklin was not working on the sniper case.
Franklin, a 47-year-old mother of two grown children, was killed Monday night as she and her husband loaded packages into their convertible in the parking lot outside a Home Depot at the Seven Corners Shopping Center. Ballistics evidence Tuesday connected the sniper to the slaying.
"Linda was a dedicated employee, and she will be missed," said FBI Director Robert Muller. "All of us are deeply shocked and angry over this tragedy."
An FBI chaplain at Franklin's Arlington home said Franklin and her husband were planning to move Friday to another home in the area and were at Home Depot to buy supplies for the move and the new house.
Robert Young, a Washington construction worker, returned to the shopping center Tuesday to talk with police. He said he heard a muffled gunshot and saw a white van.
Young said as he backed his truck out of his parking spot, a white Astro van with two men inside tried to turn into his lane. He said the driver appeared very agitated to find his way blocked and instead drove by a neighboring Chinese restaurant and out of sight.
Young described the driver as a short man of slight build who appeared to be Mideastern. He said, "I got a good look at the guy."
The driver "seemed to be excessively irritated because he couldn't pull into my lane," he said. "I thought this fool was going to want to get out of the van and duke or something. But he didn't. He kept on going."
Since Oct. 2, nine people have been killed and two others wounded, all of them cut down by a single bullet fired from a distance with a high-powered rifle as the victims went about their everyday tasks. The sniper's only apparent communication with investigators has been a tarot death card inscribed, "Dear Policeman, I am God."
In a continuing appeal for the public's help, Moose released composite images of a white van with roof racks that witnesses saw after Friday's slaying of a man at a gas station near Fredericksburg, Va.
Moose said there appeared to be similarities between the van seen at Friday's shooting and the light-colored van from Monday night's attack.
Manger would not say whether the witnesses to the latest attack were able to give complete license plate numbers to investigators.
"Each shooting has revealed more to this investigation. We're encouraged every day," said Michael Bouchard, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent.
The sniper escaped a huge dragnet that closed down a tangle of highways around Falls Church, 10 miles west of the nation's capital. Traffic was backed up for miles as police surrounded and searched dozens of white vans.
Tod Burke, a former Maryland police officer who teaches criminal justice at Radford University in Virginia, said the killer is either escaping before the dragnet comes does or has some kind of hideout where he can watch the chaos that erupts.
Outside the Home Depot, shoppers tentatively returned while officers made a last sweep for evidence and towed the victim's car away.
"Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place," Lorraine Burns said as she walked up to a Barnes and Noble bookstore.
___
The FBI now has all agents questioning clerks at drug stores and other businesses which sell cosmetics to find the 20-40 year angry old white male in camouflage fatigues who bought a large quantity of tanning gel and black hair dye.
Read this thread and tell me what's going on on FR with the paranoia about what might be a "white male" sniper? Why does anyone care if the sniper is an American, a caucasian, and male? I thought the objective was to find the perp and stop him from killing again.
And what's with the nonsense about how government officials hate white males and are somehow covering up for ME terrorists in this case? Doesn't that just sound like everyone in FBI? Yeah, I'll bet today's victim (a white female who worked for the FBI) was covering up for her killer being another Abdul. Can you explain any of this?
As someone who has been posting to FR nearly as long as I; you should KNOW that such generalizations do NOT apply to 'Freepers'...geez. :-)
*blush* I mean, uh, nevermind...
Some people I have spoken to are getting fed up with this constant harping on white male suspects, without ANY consideration to the possibility that these MIGHT be terrorists of Middle-East origins. Odd, especially when you consider the content of Al'Qaeda training materials. There have been a couple of witnesses that have stated that they thought the perps appeared to be Hispanic or Middle-Eastern in appearance, including the article heading this thread. The media is taking GREAT CARE not to mention these descriptions, which is really frustrating people. Why aren't ALL possibilities being considered, instead of just the 'PC white' ones?
Pubbies have no balls, demos no brain, the rest have no heart for violent political upheaval the result being you(if you're not careful) transported to a place called Ooze...
Where:
democrats, republicans, libertarians, and various other political cults are united under (a great uniter not a divider) called the Wizard of Booze. There a traitor and a patriot are the same thing depends on the day of the week. And Lible and pilory are art forms and graded by media and displayed as entertainment. And a terrorist is someone foreign or domestic wanting to blow something up or dump tea into some bay somewhere, same thing to the police here.
My world is lot simpler than that....probably not more clearly spoken but bounceing words off canards is what I do.
The FIRST nut that attacked a Greyhound bus driver (last Fall in Tennessee, not the recent one in California) was described as "Middle Eastern" by another PASSENGER on the bus, but he turned out to be Croatian and his pic didn't look Middle Eastern at all. That description hit all the wire services and was much trumpeted.
Also, there are apparently multiple eyewitnesses, including possibly some that saw a man exit a van and fire. The press have apparently personally talked to ONE eyewitness, this guy, who didn't actually see anyone shoot from the van he saw. It's entirely possible the police have 2 eyewitnesses that saw olive-skinned people and 4 that saw a white guy, etc. etc. etc. It's also not clear whether this particular witness talked to directly is a DIFFERENT witness than the guy that was mentioned by the LEO under condition of anonymity.
That the investigation ALSO didn't release to the public the sandy-haired, mustached guy (doesn't sound very "Middle Eastern) whose pic they were showing to witnesses in Virginia seems to indicate they're just not going to make public uncertain descriptions of people who may or may not be involved, not that they're deliberately covering up any descriptions that may be construed as Middle Eastern.
The only thing I'm absolutely certain of is there's now enough confusion about the case that if a NON Middle-Eastern, non-Muslim is ever arrested and convicted, there will be a massive cottage industry of people trying to claim he's innocent and the REAL Al Quaeda killers are still on the loose.<br.
This seems to be an example of people creating a completely fictional straw-man to become outraged against.
1) The investigation itself hasn't said word 1 about a white male suspect. Or any descrption of any suspect at all.
2) The media is taking GREAT CARE not to mention descriptions of ME men? The AP just mentioned it and they're the largest freakin' wire service in the world?
Let's face it..what people are upset about isn't that the only thing mentioned are white male suspects instead of ME suspects, they're upset that white male suspects are mentioned AT ALL...because they're so terrified that the shooter might actually BE a white male who went to a gun show sometime or something.
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