RICHMOND, Va., Oct. 21 (UPI) -- Maryland authorities issued yet another plea to the sniper or snipers to resume contact with the police Monday after the dramatic seizure of a white van and two men at a suburban service station near here turned about to be a false alarm.
"The person you called could not hear everything you said," Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose said. "The audio was unclear and we want to get it right. Call us back." This was the third time that Moose has used the news media to send a message to what may be the sniper or someone in contact with the sniper.
Shortly after 8 a.m. Monday, heavily armed Virginia police and federal Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms Bureau agents swooped down on a white Plymouth voyager van parked by a telephone booth near an Exxon Station in a northwest suburb of the city.
They arrested the driver and later another man and held them most of the day for questioning. The van was impounded by police.
Shortly after 6 p.m., authorities said the two men were undocumented aliens and were not connected to the Washington area sniper attacks. Henrico County spokesman Command Sgt. Thomas Shumate said the men -- from Mexico and Guatemala -- were turned over to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
The arrest underscored the tenseness that pervades Virginia and the Washington area after 19 days of sniper attacks, in which 9 persons have died and three others have been seriously wounded. The two aliens were arrested approximately 15 miles from a Ponderosa Restaurant in Ashland where the 12th victim of the sniper was shot Saturday night.
At a news conference in Henrico County, Hanover County Sheriff Stuart Cook said ballistic evidence confirmed that a 37-year-old man shot Saturday was connected to the 12 other shootings in the Washington area since Oct. 2.
Following the Virginia arrests, Moose gave the second statement to the media that followed a cryptic mention Sunday night when he said he had received a message -- apparently from the killer -- and that the man should call a phone number he had left at the scene of the most recent shooting in Ashland.
On Monday, Moose said investigators had received a response to Sunday night's plea and were formulating a response.
"The message that needs to be delivered is that we are going to respond to a message that we have received," Moose said. "We are preparing our response at this time."
It is not yet clear how the two Latin American men came to the attention of police, but even before their arrest the area was under heavy surveillance on Monday morning.
Pathenia Fields, of Royal Oldsmobile, a car dealership next to the Exxon station, told United Press International she witnessed the arrest of one of the men and the seizure of a white van.
Fields said that shortly after she arrived at work at 8 a.m. police and ATF agents rushed into the dealership and asked if it was open. When the salesman said it was, the police said, "No it isn't, it's closed," she said.
Fields watched police set up surveillance of a man in a white van, which she said was not like the van that had been described earlier by police. But she and others immediately realized that it must have been an arrest in connection with the sniper case.
Fields said police watched the van for a few moments through binoculars and then moved across 25 yards of parking lot with pistols and assault rifles at the ready and tried to enter the van from the passenger side. She said the police seemed to have trouble with the door being locked. They ran around to the driver's side and dragged a man out and forced him immediately to lie on the ground.
She said he was "not Caucasian, had dark hair, olive-colored skin, and appeared Hispanic." She said the man did not struggle with police, but he seemed surprised by their sudden presence.
And the area is swirling with rumors about how the arrest took place.
Local radio stations, quoting unnamed sources, said that the white van, which had a Mexican flag decal on a window, was first spotted in the parking lot of the Mount Vernon Middle School, about 250 yards from the Exxon station.
According to this version, police were alerted by a parent who had brought a child to school, though the schools were closed Monday due to the sniper. The police kept the car under surveillance as it drove a block and a half to a telephone booth where the arrest was made.
A second arrest was made at a Citgo station across Parham Road from the Exxon station.
The victim of the Saturday night shooting, a 37-year-old, 200-pound, 6- foot tall male, is in critical but stable condition, hospital officials said. He is conscious and breathing with a ventilator. His wife has been at his side, the doctors said in a Monday briefing, and she has asked that their identities not be revealed. The doctors said the couple was just passing through the area.
One hospital official read a statement from the man's wife thanking the people of Ashland and Richmond for their kindness and concern for unwitting victim.
"This has been a frightening and difficult time where I have feared the loss of my husband, friend and soulmate," the man's wife said. "The support I have gotten from this community, my home community and my family has seen me through this difficult time."
Dr. Rao Ivatury, director of the trauma department at the Medical College of Virginia Hospital in Richmond, said two surgeries had been conducted, and that portions of his stomach and spleen had been removed. He said the victim, whose name has not been released, would require three to four more operations over the next couple of weeks.
"He's lucky to be alive," Ivatury said.
