ST. LOUIS – Authorities on Friday pleaded with the public to call in any tip, “no matter how insignificant it may appear,” as they investigate a string of 10 shootings along a major highway south of Columbus, Ohio.
Gail Knisley, 62, was killed Tuesday when a bullet tore through the door of a car she was riding in on her way to a doctor’s appointment. Franklin County chief deputy Steve Martin said that nine other similar shooting-type incidents have been committed in the same general area along Interstate 270 – eight in the last two months and one in May.
None of the other shootings injured anyone. In several cases, the bullets punctured tires, shattered windows and ripped through the steel of sedans and minivans.
Authorities said ballistics tests tie Knisley’s shooting to at least one other case. They have avoided using the word “sniper.” But it was clear from Martin’s news conference Friday that detectives consider it at least a possibility that all 10 of the shootings are linked – and certainly are not accidental.
“To the person or persons responsible for committing these crimes, we desire to open a dialogue with you,” Martin said, asking the shooter to call a sheriff’s hotline. He also urged residents to report any suspicious behavior they might note among acquaintances, such as skipping work unexpectedly, collecting clips about the shootings or altering their physical appearance.
Because earlier shootings were reported to several different law-enforcement agencies, authorities did not realize until Knisley’s death that vehicles on I-270 repeatedly had come under fire.
Last month, they investigated as an isolated incident a report by truck driver William Briggs, 56, whose tractor-trailer was shot at as he drove home about 11:30 p.m. Oct. 19.
“I was coming back from a run and I was almost home, just sitting there listening to my favorite blues guitar player, thinking the roads were pretty empty, when boom, the window blew in,” Briggs recalled. “I’m an old Vietnam vet, and my instincts kicked right in. We were always trained to drive through an ambush, so I just gunned it.”
When he stopped a few miles down the road – his nose cut and glass shards in his hair – Briggs found what he described as a “big old hole” in the passenger side door. The bullet had torn through the driver’s window, whistled by his head and lodged in the weatherstripping.
“The way things go in the U.S. anymore, I thought it could have been a stray bullet” from a gunfight on nearby surface streets, Briggs said.
He reported it to police, who interviewed him for two hours but did not mention any similar cases. Only in the past week, Briggs said, did he realize he was not the only victim of such gunfire.
“Who in the world would do something like that?” he asked. “Whoever it is has to be a coward, to shoot at unarmed people with no chance to defend themselves.”
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