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Pastimes : DC Sniper - Theories? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: benchpress550 who wrote (304)	10/12/2002 3:43:14 PM
From: Gordon A. Langston	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2746

By Knut Royce and Tom Brune WASHINGTON BUREAU; Knut Royce is a special correspondent. October 12, 2002 Washington - Some investigators believe the Washington-area sniper is using an AR-15 assault rifle, possibly a shortened version, and may have fired from a vehicle driven by an accomplice in some of the shootings, a senior federal law enforcement official said Friday. As the unknown sniper continues to elude capture since he began terrorizing the area Oct. 2, investigators have begun to narrow the field of weapons that the sniper might be using, with many of them leaning toward an AR-15 type, the official said. "Most of the money is on an AR type," the official said, describing an assault rifle that is the civilian version of the M-16 used by the military and is popular among target shooters because it has little recoil. A spokesman for the Montgomery County Police Department, which is running the investigation, declined to comment on the type of rifle believed to be used. Law enforcement officials have released few details about the evidence they have developed from the investigation, which is taking place primarily in the Washington suburbs in Maryland and Virginia. The senior federal official said that investigators so far have little to work with. "I am picking up more skepticism inside the investigation than is being reported," the official said. For instance, he said the investigators are unsure whether there are one or two individuals involved. And the tarot card found at the scene of the school shooting in Prince George's County was not discovered for several hours, he said, raising questions among some investigators about whether it was left by the killer. Asked whether there has been good eyewitness information produced so far, the official said it would have helped if investigators had even a mediocre witness who got two-thirds of the license plate number, but they don't. Ballistics tests of fragments of the .223-caliber bullets found at the first nine shooting scenes in the Washington suburbs have tied the shootings to a single weapon, and investigators have confirmed they found one shell casing at one of the scenes. "They haven't got shell casings at every scene, which would indicate they may just be shooting from the vehicle," the official said. "In some cases these have been slightly upgraded drive-bys, which could suggest two: one driving and one shooting." The preliminary indications that the rifle being used is in the AR family are based on a unique signature left on the bullet casing left behind at the shooting of a 13-year-old at his middle school in Maryland. The determination of the type of rifle is based on the specific location of three telltale marks caused by the firing pin, the extractor and the ejector. "Generically, all AR-15 bolts are the same," the official said. "The location of the firing pin and where it strikes the primer, the relationship to that location of the extractor mark and the relation of those two to the ejector mark are going to be the same on this whole family of weapons." But narrowing the field to ARs still poses a difficulty to investigators because millions have been manufactured, largely by Colt but also by hundreds of small manufacturers, as well as in other countries. "The problem is that this ... thing has been out there forever," the official said. "It's a 1960s-era gun." Some investigators appear to be leaning toward a lightweight, shortened type of rifle that would make it easy for a sniper to shoot from a vehicle, to allow him to take a shot and make a quick getaway, the official said. "They're talking about the Bushmaster, which is a Bullpup design, which is pretty compact," the official said. Both the Bushmaster Bullpup model and the CAR-15 are shortened versions of the AR-15, which is the civilian version of the military M-16 rifle. Knut Royce is a special correspondent. Copyright © 2002, Newsday