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From http://www.pbs.org/storewars/towns1.html, some information about Ashland VA, the home of Randolph-Macon College and Speed & Briscoe Truck Stop. It's trucker country; the area around Ashland is full of truck stops. At one time, Jarrells' up by Kings Dominion was the largest truck stop in the world and WRVA AM-1140 broadcast an all-night show from there. US1 also parallels I-95 in the north-south direction, a lot of the little mom-and-pop motels are foreign owned (possible safe houses?) and there are lots of back roads going all over the place. Lots of woods too. I would think someone who knew the area could pretty much go anywhere he wanted, especially with some local support where they could bed down until things blew over.
Early Ashland
Ashland has a rich history that gives it a sense of place unlike any other. Originally known as "Slash Cottage" for its wetlands (slash is an antiquated term for swamp), Ashland was a 19th century mineral springs resort and racecourse. Developed by the Richmond Fredericksburg and Potomac (RF&P) Railroad Company in the mid-1800s as a summer retreat, the town became the site of a Confederate cavalry training camp at the beginning of the Civil War. Later in the war, Ashland overflowed with refugees fleeing the fighting in Northern Virginia. Close to bankruptcy by the war's end, the town and the resort were saved when Randolph-Macon College decided to relocate the school from Boydton, Virginia to Ashland to attract potential students with its accessibility by train. By the turn of the century, the town was so successful that an electric streetcar line was built from Richmond to Ashland, which, along with the RF&P's Accomodation Train, helped the town develop further as a classic "streetcar suburb."
Ashland's downtown area is centered around the railroad track, where a turn-of-the-century business district still bustles. Most of the coveted Victorian residences along the railroad were built as summer homes for people from Richmond, located15 miles south. Today, the downtown is considered a national historic district.
Ashland Today
As Ashland changes with the times, it also offers a cross-section of suburban America. In the 2000 presidential election, Ashlanders divided their votes between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. The town is evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, despite the fact that surrounding areas are decidedly Republican. Since 1980, the population has increased by 40 percent to 7,200 in 2000. The ethnic diversity of Ashland is on the rise. In the past decade, nearly 500 African Americans have been annexed into town. Ashland is also a place that varies socioeconomically, as evidenced by the presence of housing of all income levels, including historical homes, bungalows, mobile homes and multi-family developments.
Ashland's proximity to Interstate 95 has increased both traffic and population, and the downtown district no longer is the town's main source of goods and services. Instead, most Ashlanders have turned to shopping centers and malls on the outskirts of town. Townspeople have fought to keep Ashland a habitable and accessible place in the midst of inevitable development. A little less than half of Ashland's 4.02 square miles is developed, primarily in single family residences, and over 12 per cent of the land is devoted to community and non-profit institutions, such as schools, churches, and the college - an unusually large amount of tax-exempt land for a small town. Ashland is pedestrian-oriented, a place where people can easily travel by foot and by bicycle.
Changing with the Times
Ashland continues to struggle to adapt to the changes that development brings. When a commercial area between Route One and the Interstate developed, it was referred to as the "messy mile," an eyesore that didn't mesh with the quaint, historic town. To integrate the area more into the town, curbs and a gutter, as well as trees and landscaping were added, transforming just another turn-off on the Interstate to part of the town. The Ashland town council has always been known to fight to preserve the town's character. When the federal government wanted to move the post office to a new building to the edge of town, residents protested loudly that they like their post office in the historic downtown area, where downtown businesses, older people and college students can easily walk to it. The postal service relented, and Ashland's post office remains downtown today. The town council also got Amtrak to renew passenger service directly from Ashland. It is the only town in American where you can board the train on Main Street and travel all the way up the East Coast. "Without ignoring what was going on in the world and nation around her...Ashland's virtue has been in refusing to become impersonal," writes town historian Rosie Shalf. But facing considerable growth pressure from Richmond as a result of the approximately 100,000 people a day that pass by on the highway, what remains to be seen is whether Ashland will be able to fight sprawl in the future and retain the intimacy and character of a small town.
Oct 20, 2002
"We are acting as if it is and we will continue in that mode until we find out it is not," said Col. Stuart Cook of the Hanover County Sheriff's Department.
The victim was hospitalized in critical condition Sunday but doctors said they were cautiously optimistic.
Authorities said doctors had not yet managed to remove the bullet, which would be needed to establish a connection to the other shootings. Physicians planned more surgery and said they still might be able to recover the bullet.
"The prognosis is still guarded, but since he is a very healthy man and he is very young, the chances are fair to good, I would say," said Dr. Rao Ivatury, director of trauma and critical care at MCV Hospital in Richmond.
Police said the victim, whose name was not released, was shot outside a Ponderosa steakhouse Saturday night after he and his wife stopped in Ashland, a town of 6,500, for gas and food. His wife told authorities the shot sounded like a car backfiring and said her husband took about three steps before collapsing.
The sniper shootings began Oct. 2. The most recent confirmed sniper attack was the Monday night killing of FBI analyst Linda Franklin outside a Home Depot store in Falls Church.
If the Saturday night shooting were confirmed as related to the others, it would be the first time the sniper has attacked on a weekend, and it would break the longest lull between shootings, about five days.
It would be the farthest south the sniper has traveled - Ashland is about 85 miles south of Washington. Previously, the farthest the sniper had strayed from the Washington area was Spotsylvania County, about 50 miles south of Washington.
Dozens of officers conducted a methodical, inch-by-inch search Sunday of a wooded area near the restaurant. Cook refused to discuss what, if anything, officers had found.
"The leads have been numerous and we hope they continue," Cook told reporters during a briefing.
Some witnesses said they heard a shot coming from the woods, but nobody reported seeing the shooter.
Earlier, Ashland Police Chief Frederic Pleasants Jr. had said no evidence had been found during searches conducted immediately following the shooting.
The shooting victim underwent three hours of surgery late Saturday at MCV Hospital, hospital spokeswoman Pam Lepley said.
He was described as conscious Sunday but unable to talk because he was on a ventilator. Doctors had to remove his spleen and part of his stomach and pancreas, Ivatury said.
Ivatury said he couldn't comment on the condition of the bullet.
Unless the bullet is removed, officials can't conclusively determine whether it was fired from the same rifle used in 11 previous assaults - nine of them fatal - in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
However, it may be possible at least to determine whether the bullet is the same size - .223-caliber - that was used in the earlier attacks, said Dr. Paul B. Ferrara, director of Virginia's Division of Forensic Science.
"It depends on the condition of the bullet and how badly fragmented it is," Ferrara said Sunday. "Sometimes a firearms expert can assess or approximate the caliber of weapon by looking at X-rays from different angles."
Pleasants said state police shut down Interstate 95 in the area immediately after the shooting was reported, as well as Route 54, where the Ponderosa is located, and Route 1, another major artery less than a quarter mile away.
"From the minute the call was received, a plan of action was put into place for setting up roadblocks," Hanover County Sheriff's Col. Stuart Cook said. "It was a rolling, continual thing."
Authorities have been on the lookout since early in the investigation for a white van with a ladder rack. However, Pleasants said that after interviewing witnesses police had no suspects and no clear description of a vehicle that could be placed at the scene of Saturday's shooting.
Russ Brickey, 26, a maintenance mechanic, said he had eaten at the Ponderosa many times and couldn't believe the violence had made its way to Ashland.
"This is like a high-tech Mayberry," Brickey said as he stood across the street from the restaurant. "Stuff like this isn't supposed to happen here - period."
Authorities in Maryland continued testing a shell casing found in a white rental truck to determine if it could be linked to the sniper attacks. Police said it would be at least Monday before they could announce whether the casing is connected to the shootings.
A source close to the investigation, however, said Sunday that "it has nothing to do with this case." The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, would not confirm reports that the shell was .30-caliber, a different size from the sniper's bullets, but said: "It's got caliber problems, it's got age problems."
The shell casing was found in a car seized at a rental agency near Dulles International Airport in Virginia, authorities said.
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Associated Press Writers Michael Buettner in Ashland, Va., and Stephen Manning in Rockville, Md., contributed to this report.
AP-ES-10-20-02 1549EDT
This story can be found at: http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGA81PNDJ7D.html