Sniper shoots Maryland man at gas station

MANASSAS, Va. -- Police hunting the Washington-area sniper searched Thursday for a white minivan seen leaving the scene of a seventh fatal shooting in the past week.\nPolice were trying to determine if Wednesday night's slaying at a gas station in northern Virginia was linked to the sniper. Dean Harold Meyers, 53, of Gaithersburg, Md., was gunned down moments after filling his tank.\nTwo men were seen in a white van shortly after the sniper slayings began eight days ago in the Washington suburbs. The vehicle described by witnesses to Wednesday's shooting was similar -- a white "panel truck."\n"It's a minivan but instead of windows around the side, it's solid. We don't know about windows in the back," Sgt. Kim Chinn, a Prince William County police spokeswoman, told reporters Thursday. The vehicle was described as looking like a Dodge Caravan, she said.\nShe stressed that the Virginia killing had not been definitely linked to the eight earlier sniper shootings, six of them fatal, in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia since Oct. 2. Manassas is approximately 30 miles west of the nation's capital and about 40 miles southwest of Bowie, Md., the site of Monday's shooting that wounded a boy outside a school.