FALLS CHURCH, Va. Ñ A woman was shot in the upper body and killed outside a Home Depot store Monday night. Witnesses reported hearing a single shot fired, and police said the shooting might be related to the sniper spree.
"A female has been shot and killed," said Fairfax County Police Lt. Amy Lubas.
The shooting occurred at approximately 9:15 p.m., Fairfax County Police Chief Tom Manger said.
A witness cited by the local NBC TV affiliate described a man with olive skin, a blue jacket, blue pants, leaving the area in a white 1990 Chevy van with Virginia plates.
Chief Manger said there was a lookout for a cream-colored Astro van with the right rear tail light out.
The shopping center where the shooting occurred is about two miles inside the 495 Beltway and adjacent to the famed seven corners intersection in Falls Church where Highway 50, Highway 7 (Leesburg Pike), Wilson Blvd. and Sleepy Hollow Rd. intersect.
Helicopters circled spotlighting nearby streets and police cars were blocking intersections and inspecting vans.
All streets in the area were blockaded by 10 p.m. and neighbors walking their pets in nearby residential areas urged one another to return indoors.
One witness reported an empty unmarked white panel truck parked in a bank parking lot less than 400 yards from the shooting site.
President Bush said the "cold-blooded" attacks have made him sick to his stomach. "I weep for those who have lost their loved ones," he said. "The idea of moms taking their kids to school and sheltering them from a potential sniper attack is not the America that I know."
A police spokesman said roads were being closed in the area, about 10 miles west of Washington, D.C. The Maryland task force investigating the sniper attacks was conferring with Fairfax authorities to see if the shooting is related.
Virginia State Police reported independently that they were on the lookout for a white Chevrolet Astro van, last seen traveling east on Route 50 from Falls Church. Interstates 66 and I-95 are nearby.
The Home Depot is in the Seven Corners Shopping Center, a 450-thousand-square-foot strip shopping center with a parking garage. The center also has a grocery store, a crafts store, a bookstore.
The body of the victim lay under a sheet is in the parking lot in front of the Home Depot, on the first floor of a two-story structure, 30 yards from the store entrance.
Kristin Reed, a supervisor at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in the sprawling strip mall, said six employees were locked inside the store with an FBI agent.
"Cops and cops and more cops," Reed said of the scene outside. "There's a lot of people walking around."
Reed said no one heard the shot inside her store. But "a customer had just walked outside, then came back in and said `I think I heard a shot.'"
The federal agent in the bookstore "hasn't said anything to us. He was on the phone with someone," she said.
