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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 22, 2002)
Nation & world briefing Two men released in sniper investigation Ron Hutcheson, Ben Finley and Sumana Chatterjee Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT) ROCKVILLE, Md. — A possible suspect in the Washington-area sniper killings called police Monday, but authorities said the conversation was garbled and they urged the per son to call back. an Police Chief Charles Moose of Montgomery County; Md., nounced the tant after Virginia into custody in will be another investigative_ The men, alleged to be illegal immi grants from Guatemala and Mexi co, later were turned over to immi gration authorities for deportation proceedings. In another development Monday, ballistics experts confirmed Satur day’s shooting in Ashland, Va., was the sniper’s work. They reached their conclusion after examining a bullet that was removed from the victim, a 37-year-old man who was listed in critical but stable condition at Richmond’s Medical College of Virginia Hospitals. The telephone call raised hopes of a break in a case that has baffled investigators and terrorized an area stretching from Washington’s northern suburbs to Richmond, Va., about 100 miles to the south. Police think the caller is the shooter. But Moose, who is directing a sniper ta.s.k force, said the call was garbled. Speaking to the caller through the news media, he urged the person to oontaetpolice again. . “The person yon called did not hear everything that you said,” Moose said, reading from a pre pared statement. “The audio was unclear, and we want to get it right. Moose repeated the statement word-for-word at the end of his brief news conference : Tight-lipped police declined to provide any details of the caller’s So that we can clearly message or the circumstances that led to the communication. The day began dramatically, as police SWAT teams outside Rich mond surrounded a white Ply mouth Voyager van that had stopped beside an Exxon station’s ty phone. Police yanked two men m the vehicle, handcuffed them, questioned them throughout the day and concluded they were unin volved in the case. They’d walked into a staked-out site, said one fed eral official, who asked not to be identified, and were merely “at the wrong place at the wrong time.” The two men, an unnamed 21 year-old Mexican national and 35 year-old Guatemalan immigrant, were turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The wife of the latest shooting vic tim — her identity and her hus “This has been a frightening and difficult time, where I have feared for the loss of my husband, friend and soul mate,” she said. “The hospital has taken care of all of our needs, so there is no need to send anything other than continued prayer. Please pray also for the attacker and that no one else is hurt.” Doctors said the victim, a 6-foot, 200-pound man, faces a grueling or deal of three to four more operations, possibly interspersed with internal infections and other life-threatening complications. The snipers bullet en tered the left side of the man’s ah <!omen and tore through his stom ach, his pancreas, a kidney and his spleen before lodging in his chest *; “He's lucky to be alive,” said sur geon Rao Ivatury. “We anticipate lots of complications. ... The next two weeks will be crucial.” Ivatury said the bullet seemed to explode in the man’s stomach, rip ping the organ apart. Doctors had to remove his spleen, half of his pan creas and about two-thirds of his stomach. They also recovered most of the bullet. Police efforts to communicate with the sniper began with the dis covery of a message at Saturday’s shooting site, outside a Ponderosa restaurant in Ashland, near Rich mond. Moose revealed the message at a news conference Sunday night and said it included a telephone number. “You gave us a telephone num ber,” he said, addressing his com ments to person who left the mes sage. “We do want to talk to you. Call us at the number you provided.” By dictating a phone number of his choosing, the person who left the message could have been trying to get police to establish a dedicated line for his calls. © 2002, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services. Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondents Daniel Chang, Seth Borenstein and Tony Pugh contributed to this report. High court will not hear appeal about juvenile execution Shannon McCaffrey Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT) WASHINGTON — A sharply di vided Supreme Court refused Mon day to consider abolishing the exe cution of juvenile killers. By a 5-4 margin the court declined to hear the appeal of a Kentucky man who has been sentenced to die for ab ducting, sodomizing and killing a gas station attendant when he was 17. Last term, the high court banned the death penalty for mentally re tarded people, ruling it was “cruel and unusual punishment.” Four of the more liberal justices said Mon day that the court’s review should extend to those who commit capital crimes before they are 18. Justice John Paul Stevens on Mon day called the practice of putting ju venile offenders to death “shame ful.” “The practice of executing such offenders is a relic of the past and is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society,” he wrote in his dissent from the majori ty opinion. In refusing to hear the appeal, the majority offered no comment. Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer joined Stevens in his dissent. Stevens, Ginsburg and Breyer had said over the summer that they want ed the court to take up the issue of ju venile killers on death row. The case of Kevin Nigel Stanford, of Louisville, would have allowed them to do so. Stanford, now 39, has been on death row since 1982. He was con victed of shooting a 20-year-old woman in the face and leaving her body kneeling in the back seat of her mother’s Chevrolet Impala, jeans and underwear around her ankles. Stanford’s lawyer Margaret O’Don nell said that like the mentally re tarded, teenagers were not as culpa ble as adults for crimes they committed. She cited research on brain development showing that adolescents are “less able to control their impulses and make reasoned judgments” than adults are. © 2002, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services. in Israel Cliff Churgin and Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT) HADERA, Israel — A suicide car bombing destroyed a bus at the Karkur Junction on Monday, about five miles from Hadera in northern Israel, killing at least 14 passengers and wounding more than 40 people. Two bombers also died. The militant Islamic Jihad move ment claimed responsibility for the attack, which the Palestinian Au thority condemned. The bombing was the most dead ly suicide attack since early August. A smaller attack a month ago prompted Israel to surround and de stroy much of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s headquarters. That military action was sharply criti cized by the Bush administration, which is worried about the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on its ability to build a coalition against Iraq. It was unclear how Israel would respond this time. White House spokesman Ari Fleis cher condemned Monday’s bombing. Bus 841 was on its way from Kiry at Shemona to Tel Aviv when it stopped at the Karkur Junction at spoke to driver Chaim Avraham, but before he could answer, a Kia jeep loaded with an estimated J75 pounds of explosives rammed the back of the bus, causing an explo sion. Lightly wounded passengers, by standers and soldiers from a nearby base began to evacuate the wound ed, but the bus quickly caught fire. The fire’s heat caused ammunition that soldiers on the bus were carry ing to explode and prevented rescue workers from boarding the bus for 30 minutes. Hadera is about halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa. The area around the coastal city has seen many Pales tinian bombings, with terrorists crossing over from the northern West Bank, less than a half-hour’s drive away. Police think the explo sives-laden car came from the West Bank city of Jenin. The attack came two days before Assistant Secretary of State William Bums was due to visit Israel as part of a tour of Middle East nations. Israel recently has attacked the Gaza Strip repeatedly, targeting Palestinian militants. Bystanders, in f eluding children, have been killed and wounded. 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