it's difficult for me to put any stock in the '9 killed/11 shot' scenario.
i just don't believe that this guy(s) intended to miss twice ...
anyway, glad there's a pile of work waiting in the shop,
as listening to the LE/media windbags all day would likely drive me completely around that fabled bend 
There were still plenty of LE officials and officers around, as well as news trucks.
Interesting is that the school on the opposite (westbound) side of Rt. 50 seems to have become an area of LE interest. This is a Fairfax County public school exactly opposite the HD, with a large parking lot and a grassy hill. The entire area of the hill was surrounded with Crime Scene tape. Many of you may have seen the news video yesterday of police cadets searching a parking lot area. That is the school parking lot.
The interesting thing about this lot is that it affords a direct line-of-sight into the 5th inside lane of the HD parking lot (I believe that's where the shooting took place), as well as a direct, unobstructed line-of-sight to the main entrance/exit of the store.
Having lived in the area for a number of years, I'm pretty certain that the school parking lot is completely unlit at night, as is the area immediately surrounding it. It is dark as dark can be. Also, the entrance into the lot is a mere 15 feet from the entrance ramp onto Rt. 50. I can't imagine it would take more than 10 seconds to exit from a shooting position in the lot onto westbound Rt. 50, which is not an interstate but certainly a high-speed (45-50 MPH) state road.
From the lot (it's not taped off as a crime scene), I then took a closer at the access road on the opposite side of the Rt. 50, just on the outside of the HD parking lot. This is the only spot where witnesses could realistically have ID'd suspects, vehicles, or anything else (as I said, the school parking lot would have been pitch black, and is 100 yards across the road, no one in the HD parking lot could possibly have seen anything whatsoever from that distance).
If in that access road, it looked as if the shooter might in fact have needed to exit their vehicle in order to aim into the 5th lane of the HD parking lot. Also, there's a small rise/hill, and they may have actually needed to walk up that rise perhaps 5 to 10 feet.
So the bottom line is that the access road just outside the Home Depot lot seems a very bad choice, and not consistent with previous shootings which have been in the 100 yard range according to news reports.
The conclusion from this is that the school parking lot on westbound Rt. 50 provided the ideal line-of-sight into the HD parking lot, is in cover of complete darkness, and provided immediate egress onto Rt. 50. On the other hand, the access road just outside the HD parking lot is well-lit, seems inconvenient from a positioning point-of-view, and has relatively tricky egress routes.
Bottom line: because of the darkness and distance, the school lot would have provided no witness opportunities, whereas a shooter on the HD access road would have been completely exposed and provided many witness sightings.
It seems to me inconceivable that the shooter would have broken so severely from established pattern to use the HD access road, and entirely consistent that he/they would have used the school parking lot.
Finally, I did speak with several other locals who were observing just as I was. Everyone without exception believed the shooter had used the school parking lot, and they had thought so since the moment they first heard of the shooting on the news. Standing there on the scene, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that their initial and imnmediate impression had been correct: the shot was taken from the school.
If that is true, none of the "witness accounts" make a lot of sense, because the shooter was 100+ yards away, in pitch black darkness, and within 10 feet of three separate egress choices. He/they would have been gone within 30 seconds.
My previous thinking on this was dictated by the purported "witness acounts". Having now looked at the scene, and with at least one account being entirely dismissed, I'd say that they're all quite suspect if not entirely wrong.
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