Posted on 10/16/2002 2:06:53 AM PDT by Peach
To avoid multiple vanity threads regarding any news from press conferences, let's keep a live commentary thread going again today.
I read one of these "witness" accounts (sniper exiting vehicle) this morning in the Wash Post.
Actually it is not a witness account, but a hearsay account. A witness told another non-witness bystander at HD, who in turn told the Post.
And that account is completely implausible.
He said the van was pointed westbound and at the end of the parking lane in which the victim was shot. This makes no sense, unless (a) the shooter was actually inside the parking lot (extremely unlikely) or (b) the shooter was parked in the wrong direction on the one-way access road just outside the HD parking lot. As one who has shopped at this HD, I can say with certainty that this latter notion is ridiculous.
Furthermore, hearsay-man said the shooter got out of the van, got behind it, shot, got back in and drove away.
Think it through. The van is pointed westbound. The driver's side door is therefore closest to the victim. In this account, the shooter gets out of the van (on the driver's side which is facing the victim), walks all the way around to the side of the van opposite the victim, takes the shot, and then walks again around the van and enters the driver's seat.
If the van was pointed westbound (and I don't believe that's true), the shooter logically need only open the door, take his shot, and close the door. He would not have to exit the van, and certainly would not need to walk to the side of the van opposite the victim. That makes no logical sense.
If the van was inside the lot and pointed east (this solves the walking-around-the-van problem), he would have been basically stuck, headed directly for the upstairs lot entrance.
So we're back to the shooter being just outside the lot, facing east, sitting on the one-way, eastbound access road. If you've seen the photos of the 2 dozen cadets on their knnes, combing though the grass, that is the access road just in the foreground. And that's also approximately the middle of the HD parking lot, where the victim was shot.
As for the "witness" accounts of the van being stuck in traffic, causing the driver to make a U-turn across the median, these are are equally absurd.
Logically, the van was in the eastbound access road. From there, one cannot get back onto Rt. 50 without hopping a 15-foot grass median between the access road and the (very busy) highway. Not a very discreet exit strategy.
On the other hand, if one drives for 15 seconds to the end of the access road, there are several inconspicuous exit strategies (personally, I believe they made a right and went over to Rt. 7, 200 yards away).
These conflicting and sometimes implausible witness accounts are not very helpful.
-- 6:04 p.m. Wednesday: James D. Martin, 55, of Silver Spring, Md., killed in Maryland grocery store parking lot.
-- 7:41 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 3: James L. "Sonny" Buchanan, 39, of Arlington, Va., killed while cutting grass at Maryland auto dealership.
-- 8:12 a.m. Thursday: Taxi driver Prem Kumar Walekar, 54, of Olney, Md., killed at Maryland gas station.
-- 8:37 a.m. Thursday: Sarah Ramos, 34, of Silver Spring, Md., killed outside Maryland post office.
-- 9:58 a.m. Thursday: Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, 25, of Silver Spring, Md., killed as she vacuumed her van at Maryland gas station.
-- 9:15 p.m. Thursday: Pascal Charlot, 72, of Washington, D.C, killed while standing on a street in the nation's capital.
-- 2:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 4: 43-year-old woman wounded in craft-store parking lot in Fredericksburg, Va.
-- 8:09 a.m. Monday, Oct. 7: 13-year-old boy wounded as he is dropped off at Bowie, Md., school.
-- 8:15 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 9: Dean Harold Meyers, 53, of Gaithersburg, Md., shot dead at a gas station near Manassas, Va., about 30 miles west of Washington, D.C.
-- 9:30 a.m. Friday, Oct. 11: Kenneth H. Bridges, 53, shot while pumping gas at Exxon gas station in Massaponax, Va., just south of Fredericksburg on his way back from a business meeting.
-- 9:15 p.m. Monday, Oct. 14: Linda Franklin, 47, of Arlington, Va., was shot in the head and killed as she and her husband loaded packages into their car outside a Home Depot store in Falls Church, Va. (Fairfax County).
I heard it once, and never again.
They should be able to figure out this morning where the shot came from and figure out which witness is correct or useful or absurd.
No witnesses and all of a sudden we have a bunch??
It's the witness that hasn't made headlines that the sniper has to think about.
Sac
Cell phones.
I'm laughing here thinking about the day we were getting someone else's conversation and visa versa on our radios. One of the "rocket scientists" said "let's change channels"..."use channel three". It took a couple minutes, and the second said..."let's not tell them the channel". We didn't hear them the rest of the day.
Sac
Or those "u-store-it" complexes. A lot of those are located near highways and commercial areas. It would be interesting to see if there are u-store-it complexes close to where the attacks took place. It would be simple to have a front person go around and rent a bay in one of several of the complexes, then drive into the closest one in a manner of minutes as soon as the shooting is done.
How else to explain that it seems that no one (neighbors, co-workers, family, etc.) has reported these vehicles? The vehicles are going underground and staying there until shortly before and after the shootings. They're being hidden.
I hadn't heard that. Interesting.
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