By PETER T. KILBORN, The New York Times
WASHINGTON -- With three people dead in similar single-shot sniper attacks in West Virginia last week, federal agents who investigated the serial sniper case in the Washington area last year have joined the investigation, officials said today.
“We wanted to get those agencies in here now,” Sheriff Dave Tucker of Kanawha County said in Charleston, the state capital and county seat. “We don’t want to overlook anything that could result the way it did” last year, when 13 men and women were killed, most in Washington suburbs in Maryland and Virginia.
Sheriff Tucker said 15 teams of two or three officers each — drawn from city, county and state agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms — were looking into clues and more than 100 tips from telephone callers.
“We have the best law enforcement agencies in the country working on this,” said Mayor Danny Jones of Charleston, a former Kanawha County sheriff. “We’re telling people don’t go out alone after dark, keep your eyes open and avoid convenience stores.”
The first victim was Gary Carrier Jr., 44, who the police said was shot in the head and killed on Aug. 10. They said he was standing at a pay phone near a Go-Mart convenience store in Charleston.
Four days later, on a Thursday night, 31-year-old Jeanie Patton died from a shot to the head while pumping gas at a Speedway store in Campbells Creek, an unincorporated area three miles east of Charleston.
Later that night, Okey Meadows, 26, was killed outside a Go-Mart store 14 miles southeast of the city, by a shot to the neck.
“They all occurred at a convenience store,” Sheriff Tucker said. “They all occurred at night. All the victims were shot from a distance. All suffered a single shot.”
But Sheriff Tucker said it was unclear whether one person had fired the shots. Officers said they were reviewing videotapes from the Campbells Creek and Cedar Grove stores. Officials said a state crime laboratory had determined that the bullets came from a small caliber weapon like a .22 rifle, but they would not disclose what caliber or whether they came from the same weapon.
The authorities said they were looking for a dark-colored Ford F-150 pickup with an extended cab that witnesses to two of the shootings reported seeing nearby. Initially, officials said the witnesses reported that its color was black. But Chief Jerry Pauley of the Charleston police said the color would have been hard to discern in the dark and that it might have been maroon, dark green or dark blue.
Chief Pauley said a woman described the driver “as a large white male.”