Sniper fears high as schools resume

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Memories of last fall's sniper attacks in the Washington, D.C., area, including one shooting outside a school, have raised the anxiety level here as students prepare to start the school year knowing a copycat shooter may be on the loose.

Three people have been killed this month in a series of sniper-style slayings at convenience stores in the Charleston area. Ballistics tests have confirmed that the bullets used in the killings came from the same .22-caliber gun.

"People are edgy. People are jumpy. There's no question about it," said Kanawha County sheriff's chief deputy Phil Morris.

Public schools will open Tuesday for the 27,000 students in Kanawha County, where Charleston and other communities victimized by the shootings are located.

Superintendent Ron Duerring said the district isn't planning any "extraordinary" safety measures, but all school principals are prepared to discuss emergency response plans with concerned students.

Campbells Creek resident Rita Carr said she plans to drive her fifth-grade son and eighth-grade daughter to school rather than let them take the bus.

"I'm scared to send them," Carr said Saturday.

She said the shootings have created an atmosphere of panic and fear in Campbells Creek, where one of the sniper slayings occurred.

"I don't even think they should have mentioned it on the news," she said. "We would have been better off if they had left it out."

Last October, a 13-year-old boy was shot and critically wounded outside a Bowie, Md., school, the youngest victim of the Washington-area sniper attacks. Lee Boyd Malvo, 18, and John Allen Muhammad, 42, have been charged with 13 shootings, including 10 deaths, stemming from the three-week shooting spree in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

In the Kanawha County schools, security had been boosted even before this month's shootings, prompted by violence at a school board meeting last month. A disgruntled school maintenance worker shot a teacher and doused two other people with gasoline.

"In light of what has happened ... we really have beefed up our security measures in all our schools," superintendent Duerring said.

Gary Carrier Jr., 44, was killed Aug. 10 while talking on a pay telephone outside a Charleston convenience store.

Four days later, Jeanie Patton, 31, and Okey Meadows Jr., 26, were killed in separate shootings about 90 minutes and 10 miles apart outside rural convenience stores east of Charleston. The county operates K-8 schools in Campbells Creek and Cedar Grove, the communities where the two were killed.

Authorities have said all three shootings involved the same caliber weapon, but they haven't found links between the victims.

Possibly drug related

Kanawha County Sheriff David Tucker has said the shootings could be drug related. Charleston police chief Jerry Pauley and Mayor Danny Jones have disagreed, fueling the public's fears that the slaying victims could have been picked at random.

Meanwhile, federal investigators are trying to preserve a united front, insisting the investigation remains open while also considering a possible drug connection.

With the similarities between the attacks so strong, the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives joined state and local authorities in the investigation shortly after the second and third shootings. Police said they have received more than 600 tips.

"The sheriff and the chief have both been very clear that we are not limiting the scope of the investigation to any one theory," said Patrick Berarducci, an agent for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. "We're not going to put any more weight on any one area than another. ... We don't discuss the evidence that we've identified."

Authorities are searching for at least two men -- a heavyset, goateed man believed to be in a dark-colored Ford F-150 the night of the two shootings, and a man with "skinny white legs" who is considered a witness.

Despite the sniper-style shootings, people are still visiting the area.

Mary Ellen Ernst, a former Charleston resident who now lives in Cape Canaveral, Fla., visited the area this weekend for a wedding and said she isn't afraid. "West Virginians shoot their friends and neighbors," Ernst told the Charleston Daily Mail. "They never shoot tourists."

Nearly half of all murders in West Virginia are committed by someone known to the victim and are often the result of domestic violence.

Still, West Virginia boasts one of the nation's lowest crime rates. In October, the FBI reported that the number of crimes in West Virginia dropped between 2000 and 2001, from 47,067 to 46,120.

Vicki Taylor was visiting Charleston this week for a seminar and said her colleagues badgered her about her destination.

"My boss said, 'Are you going up there with that sniper loose?'

Taylor said she isn't afraid to be at the seminar at a downtown hotel, but she also wasn't planning to tour other areas of the city.

"I'm not going to any convenience stores," she said.