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As a matter of interest, I went over to the Home Depot yesterday to take a look.

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.

I'm going to be shown as clinging to the terrorist cell hypothesis here. First, one account is being dismissed by who? If it's the police poo-poohing it to the media, it's quite possibly misinformation. (Of course, that would require sublety and cleverness not yet seen in this case's media handling...)

Secondly, there is the possibility that the terrorist cell planted people, wearing whatever clothing and driving whatever vehicles, in the Home Depot parking lot to get attention and get the description they wanted given to the police. The terrorists can also be using misdirection. Showing the enemy, in this case the police, what they want to see is a classic counter-reconnaissance technique.

Thanks a lot for your report. There is so much spin and false information coming from the talking heads. Those of us that are seriously following this really appreciate some reliable information.

Fregards

Thanks so much for actually going to look at the scene and giving such a detailed and thoughtful analysis. I don't live in the area, but I have been saying since Monday that that area in the dark near the school was the place he det up and waited for a victim.

The witness accounts of seeing the shooter up close in the Home Depot lot never made any sense, but everyone was looking in the direction of the victim and if they saw anyone running back to their vehicle (which would be pretty normal if a gunshot was heard), they made the mental leap of assuming it must have been the shooter.

Also remember it was reported the night of the shooting that the bloodhounds took off from the Home Depot parking lot to that dark area directly across the street near the school. From there they said the dogs ran down the ramp and more than 4 miles down the highway toward the beltway before they lost the scent. This supports your observation of the likely escape route.

I went over to the Home Depot yesterday to take a look.

Thanks for the going and the informative on-the-scene report/post. BTW, I agree with you completely.

What is the name of the school you are talking about and what street is it on

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.

It's possible that the shooter was at the school parking lot, but that the decoy vehicle was in the HD parking lot.