From NYT 5 People, Seemingly Picked at Random, Are Slain in Maryland By FRANCIS X. CLINES SPEN HILL, Md., Oct. 3 — Five people were killed in a series of sniper shootings over 16 hours in the suburbs north of Washington, prompting a frantic manhunt today throughout the region based on the barest of information. Law enforcement officials said they were looking for one or possibly two suspects who might be traveling in a white delivery truck with black lettering. Investigators said all five people were shot from long range in public places — the parking lot of a grocery, outside a post office, standing at a gasoline pump. One victim was killed while riding a lawn mower. All the shootings occurred within a one-mile radius. Investigators said there was nothing yet apparent to link the victims. All were adults and white, except for a black man and a Hispanic woman. Police officers, working on a report that a white delivery truck had sped away from the scene of the fifth shooting, stopped dozens of white vans, pulled the drivers out and in some cases forced them onto the ground and handcuffed them. But by early afternoon, no suspects had been arrested. Panicky residents flooded police switchboards this morning with reports of sightings of white delivery vans. As a precaution, schools were locked down in Arlington County, in Northern Virginia, and in the southern Maryland counties of Prince Georges and Montgomery, all bedroom communities to Washington. In the capital itself, school officials barred students from going outside during recess. And in an effort to keep the roads clear and the chaos down, the authorities encouraged parents not to come to schools to pick up their children. For part of the rush hour this morning, Interstate 95 was shut down as police officers pursued a white van. That, too, turned out to be a false lead. Officials said the first slaying occurred Wednesday night, when a 55-year-old man was shot in the parking lot of a Wheaton grocery store. Then, between 7:41 a.m. and 9:58 a.m. today — four more people were fatally shot: the man on the lawnmower, in the White Flint area; a man pumping gas at a Mobil station in the Aspen Hill area; a woman at a post office next to the Leisure World retirement community in Silver Spring; a woman who was vacuuming her van at a gas station in Kensington. The police said they had no eyewitnesses to any of the shootings. But mechanics at the gas station where the fifth victim was killed told The Associated Press that they had heard the shots. "We didn't see any confrontation or anybody around her," said John Mistery, one of the mechanics.
