Arrest made in Virginia interstate shootings

Associated Press
Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado
March 28, 2008

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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia (AP) -- Police in Virginia say they have arrested a suspect in a series of shootings along a mountain interstate highway.
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Virginia State Police say Slade Woodson is a suspect in a series of shootings on I-64.

Woodson was charged in a separate shooting at a home that happened early Thursday morning, but police say more charges are possible.

Six vehicles were hit during the gunfire that began early Thursday on Interstate 64. Two cars, a van, a tractor-trailer and an unoccupied dump truck were among the vehicles that were struck. Two people were injured, but their wounds were not life threatening.

Authorities said earlier they were seeking at least two people suspected of firing the shots just west of Charlottesville.

Police also were trying to determine whether shots fired at a bank in Waynesboro between midnight and 2 a.m. Thursday were connected to the highway shootings. Waynesboro Police Sgt. Kelly Walker said four bullets struck the building, a sign and an unoccupied van in the parking lot.

Walker said police found a light-colored AMC Gremlin seen on surveillance video around the time shots were fired. Thee car had been abandoned along U.S. 29 in Albemarle County.

The early Thursday shootings had motorists and police on edge in a region where memories of the deadly Beltway snipers still haven't faded.

Col. Steven Flaherty, the state police superintendent, would not characterize the shootings as the work of snipers, calling it "random firing."

There were differences from the sniper spree of nearly six years ago, including the fact that those attacks targeted people who were standing outside their cars.

Nevertheless, Flaherty conceded the 2002 attacks, in which 10 people were killed and three wounded in Maryland, the District of Columbia and northern Virginia, were on investigators' minds as they sought those behind Thursday's spree.

"It reminded us of a lot of emergencies we've had," said Flaherty, whose agency also dealt with last April's Virginia Tech shootings.

Residents, too, were mindful of the crimes of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, who were convicted in the 2002 shootings. Christy Lucado, who drives through the area on the way to work, said she immediately thought about the sniper shootings Thursday morning when a friend called and told her the news.

"I thought, well, Lord, my car's out in the driveway, my keys are in it and I'm up on the mountain by myself," said Lucado, who waits tables at Duner's restaurant in Ivy, near the exit where one of the latest shootings happened.

"We're talking the mountains up here, and the first thing you usually think of is drunk rednecks. But the fact they moved from one exit to another makes me think it wasn't just someone there shooting off their gun."

Police took a call from a driver whose vehicle was hit just after midnight. Four more occupied vehicles headed westbound were shot, one at an on-ramp at Ivy, the others at an overpass in the Afton area. An unoccupied Virginia Department of Transportation dump truck was targeted later, farther down the interstate.

The 20-mile stretch of I-64 between Waynesboro and Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia, was closed for nearly six hours while police searched for suspects and evidence. The interstate reopened around dawn.

Albemarle County public schools closed for the day, but decided to hold classes again on Friday.

"Given the unknown nature of a still-evolving situation, the idea of putting children in buses, cars or unsupervised at rural bus stops did not seem like the best thing to do," said Lee Catlin, a spokeswoman for the county.

Police think the bullets were all of the same caliber but they could not be sure until ballistics tests are completed.

The two injured motorists were treated at hospitals and released. Flaherty said he did not know whether the victims were struck by bullets or shattered glass.