Word: snipering
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...over alternately last week by police, Secret Service agents and the FBI. The feds have donated premier ballistics forensics investigators. The FBI, using software originally designed for movies such as Star Wars, is creating animated 3-D computer-graphic displays to reconstruct the crime scene and help calculate the sniper's position, in hopes of jogging potential witnesses' memories. And federal law-enforcement sources tell TIME that the bureau has asked the Pentagon to search its records for recently discharged GIs who went through sniper school. The schools teach snipers to work in tandem--one as the spotter, the other...
Meanwhile, regular folks have awkwardly adapted to the presence of a sniper intheir community. After a 13-year-old boy was shot in the stomach walking into school on Oct. 7, events were summarily canceled: field trips, all outdoor school sporting events, four homecoming celebrations, even SAT exams. Park rangers have been spotted monitoring soccer fields--the de facto town squares for Montgomery County's affluent families. From the backseat of a Fairfax, Va., woman's car, a 5-year-old who has been newly forbidden from riding his bike asks, "Mommy, will it hurt if I get shot...
...This diligence is interrupted by the occasional lunatic or false positive. Several people have called claiming to be the sniper, and police have traced each one, only to find a jokester at the other end. And a Virginia man who had offered the best witness description yet has been charged with giving false information. More than 70,000 calls have poured into the tip line, generating 14,487 leads. But most callers leave general suggestions or rants. Police have tracked down men who match the killer's profile, but they have turned out to have alibis...
...lack of progress inflated theories of a terrorist connection. Al-Qaeda suspects in Guantanamo and Belgium have been questioned, spurring a vague warning for U.S. Senators to watch their backs on the golf course. Says a counterterrorism official: "Al-Qaeda videotapes have shown them training in sniper tactics. Is it possible? Absolutely." Still, insists another intelligence official, "there's no reason to believe that it is al-Qaeda at this point...
...slow-motion wait continued for the people who live within the sniper's range. Politicians were openly worried about how to secure polling places for upcoming elections. And high school football teams played at secret locations released only on a need-to-know basis...