Sniper Putting Ohio Town On Edge

OBETZ, Ohio —  The sky was as gray and sodden as wet cotton balls, and Heather Welch’s mood was grim to match as she strode across the parking lot at Hamilton Central Elementary School last week to pick up her daughter, Paige.

Spotting another mom she knew, Welch tried for a little black humor to lighten the mood. “You send your kid here for target practice too?”

The other mom, Angel Sites, looked about to cry.

“Don’t even say that!” she said. “Or I won’t send her back here tomorrow.”

And so it went all through this small town just south of Columbus, as edgy mothers and mail carriers and truck drivers struggled to adjust their routines to the terrifyingly random threat of a sniper on the loose.

Detectives investigating 13 shootings -- one of them fatal -- in and around this modest suburb knocked on doors Saturday, on what they called a “neighborhood canvass” amid tinsel and Christmas lights to flush out clues. They have received more than 1,200 tips in the last week, but Chief Deputy Steve Martin of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department said he was convinced someone out there knows something -- and isn’t telling.

“We continue to believe that there are persons in the community who may have witnessed or [may] know something,” he said, again offering a $10,000 reward for solid leads.

At dusk Saturday, the Ohio Department of Transportation shut down a stretch of Interstate 270 through Obetz for two hours so investigators could “conduct necessary analysis and measurements,” Martin said. Authorities would not elaborate. But a seven-mile stretch of I-270 and nearby U.S. 23 have been repeatedly targeted in the string of shootings, scaring both commuters and residents.

“When we drive, my grandma makes me dial 911 on the cellphone and hold it so I’ll be all ready to press ‘send,’ ” said Brendan Perales, 12.

That hardly reassures him. “The thing is,” Perales confided as he walked home from Hamilton Middle School late last week, “I’m always thinking about how I’m not sure whether someone might be hiding in the old schoolhouse up by that corner.”

Nearly all the shootings have been reported in the last two months, though one dates to May. The lone fatality came two days before Thanksgiving, when Gail Knisley, 62, was killed by a bullet that ripped through the car door as a friend drove her down I-270.

The other shots have not injured anyone. But bullets whizzing across two and three lanes of traffic have flattened tires, shattered windshields and pierced several vehicles.

At least two hit targets more than a mile from the freeway: Before dawn on Nov. 11, a bullet crashed through the window of a third-grade classroom at Hamilton Central Elementary. And last week -- either Sunday or Monday -- a bullet penetrated the wall of a house about two miles west of the school. No one was home at the time. Ballistics tests have connected both that bullet and the one that hit the school to the Knisley homicide. Two other shootings also have been positively linked.

Because they have not recovered intact bullets from every incident, authorities cannot connect all 13 with ballistics tests. But they say they’re confident all are related.

Authorities have not released information about the type of gun used, saying they don’t want detectives, or the public, to focus suspicion too narrowly. In the sniper shootings that killed 10 people in the Washington area last fall, police trained their search at first on a white van, only to conclude later that the killers had been operating from a blue sedan.

Local authorities have consulted with investigators involved in the D.C. sniper case, as well as the detectives who caught Thomas Lee Dillon, who shot five hunters to death in southeast Ohio in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They also consult daily with the FBI.

The Sheriff’s Department “continues to be optimistic” about solving the shootings, Martin said last week as federal agents on hands and knees picked through the elementary school lawn, inch by inch, in search of clues.

Few residents here share Martin’s high hopes.

The shootings have not followed any pattern. They’ve occurred at all hours of day and night. The bullets have hit tractor-trailers, sedans, pickups, SUVs and the school window. The stretch of I-270 that has been targeted most is heavily wooded on both sides; though the trees are bare for winter, there’s plenty of scrub to hide in.

To make the investigation tougher still, deer hunting season opened last week. Hundreds of men and women with guns are trampling through the woods along the freeways, complicating the search for evidence.

Police and sheriff’s cruisers have been circling the area for days. At night, helicopters buzz overhead.

Their presence helps. But it does not quiet the fear.

“You’re always looking over your shoulder. You know you’re not going to see anything, but you still look,” said Tim Tackett, 40, a mail carrier who works in the residential neighborhoods just off I-270.

“You can’t help but think about it,” said Frank Hamilton, 71, who lives about a mile from the freeway.

The stretch of central Ohio that the sniper has targeted is an unusual patchwork of rural, industrial and suburban enclaves. From I-270, which runs three lanes in each direction, little is visible except bare trees, brightened here and there with splashes of red berries. The few clearings give way to ponds, marshes or farmland, brown and empty for winter.

Off the freeway, the middle-class village of Obetz -- home to the world’s largest zucchini festival -- has 4,000 residents. But with several industrial parks, huge warehouses, a United Parcel Service terminal and a cargo airport, Obetz is a busy transportation hub; city officials estimate that 30,000 people a day drive in and out of the city.

“If I had my way, I’d prefer not to come by here, but you about have to use this route,” said Terry Eskins, 49, who drives a tractor-trailer past Obetz daily. “My cab’s just aluminum, real thin steel,” he said, nodding toward his rig. “A decent .22 [caliber bullet] could go right through it.”

He shook his head. “This time of year, I always have to keep an eye out for deer hunters. Now, I’ve got to look for snipers too.”

Refusing to give in to fear, some say they see no point in altering their routines or trying to outsmart a sniper who has eluded authorities for months.

“If some nut out there is going to shoot, what can you do?” asked Jeff Smith, 44, an auditor who lives about a mile from I-270.

“If you go a different route, so could he,” said Jeremy Ledenican, 28, who drives through Obetz daily to deliver cars to an auction house. “I don’t worry about it at all. I don’t even think about.”

But with the story dominating local news, such nonchalance appeared to be rare.

“Obviously, whoever’s doing this can’t stop himself,” said Kerri Falivene, 29, a technology director for the city of Obetz. “It’s like a game to him. And people are not going to stop being scared until they catch him.”

Falivene’s husband was recently deployed to Afghanistan with his Marine unit. Now, she said, she knows how he feels as he tries to guard against an attack that could come from anyone, from anywhere, at any time.

Asked which spouse is more worried about the other’s safety, Falivene grimaced. “Right now,” she said, “I think it’s a tossup.”