Sniper targets I-65

SEYMOUR, Ind. - Sniper shootings of two pickup trucks along Interstate 65 in southern Indiana early Sunday left one person dead and another injured, and state police said other vehicles also might have been targeted.\nPolice also investigated two other shootings along Interstate 69 northeast of Indianapolis. No one was hurt in those shootings.\nGov. Mitch Daniels ordered the Indiana National Guard to be placed on standby to help with the investigation if needed.\nPolice were left only with questions. They said they did not know whether more than one sniper was involved or whether the two sets of shootings were related.\n"We need to find out how many weapons were involved. We need to find out how many people are involved," Sgt. Jerry Goodin said.\nThe first shooting occurred about 12:20 a.m. Sunday about 50 miles south of Indianapolis. A bullet passed through the windshield of a Chevrolet pickup, striking and killing passenger Jerry L. Ross, 40, of New Albany, one of three people in the truck at the time.\nAbout the same time, police received a report of a passenger shot in a second southbound pickup. A bullet grazed the head of that man, Robert John Otto Hartl, 25, of Audubon, Iowa. He was released after being treated at a Seymour hospital.\nAt the Seymour state police post, technicians gathered evidence from the two trucks. The truck that Ross had ridden in had a bullet hole near the top of the windshield on the passenger side, and blood stained the top of the seat.\nThe second vehicle, a Dodge Ram extended cab pickup, had a bullet hole in the middle of its windshield and a rear window that had been blown out.\nAfter Ross was shot, the driver of that truck pulled off the highway at a weigh station. While state police began investigating, the Seymour Police Department received a call from a gas station just off I-65 reporting the second shooting.\nThe second driver, Brandon Bonnesen, of Anita, Iowa, said he and Hartl were driving to Florida for construction work when he heard a loud noise.\n"I cussed a little bit and looked at my friend. He was all bent over and I said, 'You all right?' He said, 'I' m OK, keep going,'" Bonnesen said.\nThe bullet had grazed Hartl's head near his left ear, police said.\nPolice closed a 14-mile stretch of I-65 for eight hours after the shootings.\nI-65, as part of the only direct route between Chicago and Florida, is heavily traveled at all hours, Goodin said. He asked motorists who had traveled through the area during the past week to check their vehicles for bullet holes: A noise that had been dismissed as coming from a rock might actually have been a bullet.\n"We need to find out if somebody got home and washed their car and there was a bullet hole and they were passing through the Seymour area," Goodin said.\nInvestigators also issued an alert to law enforcement agencies nationwide to discover whether there have been similar shootings, Goodin said.\nDaniels, who was monitoring the situation, placed the National Guard and the Indiana Department of Homeland Security on standby and ordered both to help state police in any manner necessary.\n"We will not treat this just as a criminal act. We'll use any and all resources to find the person or persons responsible," Daniels said.\nThe I-69 shooting occurred about 50 miles north of Indianapolis. Trucker Richard G. Greek, 57, of Kunkle, Ohio, was northbound about 2:30 a.m. when he heard a series of pops and realized gunfire had struck his rig. He was not injured and drove to a nearby truck stop to call police.\nAbout an hour later, a clerk at a service station a few miles away heard gunfire and found a parked, unattended vehicle had been shot, said state police Sgt. Rod Russell.\n"Both vehicles were shot multiple times," Russell said.\nWoods line both sides of the highway, and police using tracking dogs searched the area for evidence Sunday afternoon while others surveyed it from a helicopter.\n"Right now we're just currycombing the area," Russell said.