Spate of shootings on Kansas highways prompts intense investigation

As Kansas police investigate a spate of shootings on highways around Kansas City, residents say they are shaken but not deterred from driving by the possibility that an attacker may be randomly shooting at cars in the area.

Police say 12 of the 20 incidents reported in the Kansas City area were ones in which vehicles were shot at randomly along a tangle of interstates. Police say those 12 shootings are connected, but would not elaborate as to any potential suspects.

Most of the shootings, in which three people have been wounded, are in an area on the city's south side known both as Three Trails Crossing and the Grandview Triangle, where three interstate highways and U.S. 50 intersect.

The incidents have raised fears that a serial-attacker is on the loose, drawing comparisons to a spate of shootings in Ohio in 2003 and the sniper attacks that plagued Washington in 2002.

The Ohio shootings spanned more than five months and left one person dead. Police arrested Charles McCoy Jr. for the more than two-dozen attacks. He told police voices in his head made him carry out the shootings. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison.

The sniper attacks in Washington were much deadlier: John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo killed 10 people and injured three over a three-week period.

But in Kansas City, residents say they have been relatively unfazed.

"It doesn't bother me none. If he shoots me, he shoots me," said Kathy Embley, of nearby Overland Park, Kansas. She drives through the area at least a couple times a week, and said she won't change her routines.

"It's just somebody trying to scare people and accidentally shoots them ... it gives him the glory of thinking he's high-powered, scaring people and that makes a man out of him, he thinks, and he accidentally hits people is what happens," she said.

While the shootings have some similarities in geography, time of day and circumstances, there is no physical evidence connecting them, Kansas City police spokesman Capt. Tye Grant said earlier this week. In each shooting, shots were fired from a vehicle just before reaching a highway exit ramp or road split, and the car then veered off in a different direction from the victim's vehicle.

Local and federal investigators have been meeting daily to discuss the shootings and cull through scores of tips. A reward for information leading to an arrest has been increased to $10,000.

Police Chief Daryl Forté has said he also believes the highways are safe.

"My mother lives near the Three Trails Crossing, and just this morning I told her it was safe to be out driving," he told The Kansas City Star. "I wouldn't tell my own mother that if I didn't believe it. It's probably one of the safest places in town right now."

Roger Oatman, of Belton, said Friday his daily commute involves more than 30 miles, including a section through the Grandview Triangle.

He said "to avoid going through there, I'd have to stay off the interstates for quite a while," and he's unwilling to do that.

Oatman also said "with the number of cars that go through there," his chances of getting hit are low.

"They don't seem to be trying to injure the people they're shooting at ... They're just shooting at the car and they scram, because all they want to do is to take a potshot."

Vickie Marshall, of Kansas City, Mo., was waiting with her grandson at a park-and-ride lot Friday and said she's lived in the area for 45 years.

"Yes, you always have reservations. You hear about it on TV and it's just unbelievable," she said. "But you can't not continue on living. You have to keep on."

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press