Anxious University students and Charlottesville residents were reassured yesterday to learn that Maryland police had arrested two men believed to be responsible for a slew of sniper shootings in Virginia and Maryland that lasted three weeks and left 10 dead and three injured.
"People in the Washington metro area are breathing a collective sigh of relief," Montgomery County, Md., Executive Douglas M. Duncan said at a press conference last night.
Members of a joint federal, state and local task force used the press conference to announce that ballistics tests showed the two men they arrested early yesterday morning were in possession of the weapon used in the shootings.
The arrests brought comfort to students with family living near the sites of sniper killings, who said they have felt uneasy since the first shooting Oct. 2.
"I was nervous for my family, for sure," said third-year College student Cerissa Cafasso, who is from Fairfax, Va. "As the days went on and more and more people got shot I definitely at one point called my parents and said, 'I love you.'"
Cafasso's brother has been walking home from school nervously, she said, and her mother drives past the Home Depot that was the site of one of the shootings on her way to work.
Caffasso's father had a stark message for her.
"My dad said, 'When it's your time to go, it's your time to go,'" she said.
Third-year College student Kenneth Ray, who grew up near the locations of two of the shootings in Rockville, Md., said he was shocked that murder visited his neighborhood.
"It's just unheard of in the whole area," Ray said. "It's white suburbia."
Ray visited his elementary school in the midst of the sniper scare and talked with his former teachers.
"The first and second graders thought it was just a drill when the school went into lockdown, and they were laughing," he said. "But the seventh and eighth graders knew what was going on."
Most students interviewed said they were impressed with the police effort to catch the shooters. But Ray said he was "frustrated" it took police so long to make an arrest.
Fourth-year College student Jon Fishman, from Montgomery County, said his nieces and nephews had not been allowed outside to play for weeks.
"I told my family, 'You don't have to mow the lawn today,'" said second-year College student Matthew Park, from Herndon, Va.
One of the sniper's victims was shot while cutting his grass.
Although he was worried about his family, "I don't feel at all in danger down here," Fishman said.
Some students, though, said they did not feel safe in Charlottesville either, after a man was shot by the sniper Oct. 19 in Ashland, Va., north of Richmond.
Although some students were skeptical that police had arrested the right men yesterday, most were cautiously optimistic.
"I want to wait and make sure it's the right people, because I don't want to get excited if it's not," Fishman said.
Park speculated that copycat killers might imitate the sniper shootings.
In anticipation that the sniper scare may be finally over, Charlottesville public schools tomorrow may reinstate recess, which they had cancelled for security reasons.
"We're better off going back to normal than keeping people upset," said M. T. Lewis, director of human resources for Charlottesville City Schools.
Despite the sniper's shooting of a middle school student in Maryland and ominous threats saying "Your children are not safe," Greenbrier Elementary School Principal Faye Giglio said her school was a place of refuge.
"We feel very safe" at school, Giglio said.
Her students' obliviousness was uplifting during the sniper ordeal, she said.
"Children's lives go on in so many upbeat ways," she said. "One of the things that's happened in the past weeks is a greater appreciation for the wonder that children have."
People who have lived in fear for the past three weeks will probably start to show effects of stress once they decide that the sniper case is closed, Psychology Prof. Darren Newtson said.
Citing a study he conducted of the aftermath of the 1980 Mount St. Helens volcanic eruption in Washington State, Newtson said people tend to feel the toll of stress and fatigue from a crisis only after the crisis is over.
The sniper scare may have brought many communities closer together because residents have cooperated in looking out for the sniper, he said.
"Families strengthen their ties also to deal with stress," he added.
Close-knit and organized neighborhoods probably have dealt best with the stress of the sniper scare, Newtson said, adding that most communities will go back to normal relatively quickly.
"People are surprisingly resilient," he said.
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