The FBI said early Wednesday it had taken a suspect into custody in connection with a series of shooting incidents in suburban Maryland this week, including one in which gunfire damaged a building on the National Security Agency's campus.
The Baltimore Sun, citing an FBI spokeswoman, reported that authorities believe the incidents were related, but did not reveal further details. Police in Anne Arundel County said early Wednesday that the suspect had been arrested there late Tuesday. No identifying information about the suspect was immediately available.
U.S. Park Police spokeswoman Sgt. Lelani Woods told the Associated Press that the NSA reported damage to one of its buildings close to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway in Fort Meade on Tuesday. NSA spokesman Ian Brennan says no injuries were reported.
The first shooting under investigation occurred early on Feb. 24, when a 61-year-old driver had his car windows shot out while driving in the parking lot of a shopping mall in Hanover.
The most recent spate of incidents began early Monday when police received a report of shots fired at a Walmart store in Laurel and near a mall movie theater in Columbia. Then on Tuesday, hours before the NSA incident, authorities said a dump truck driving on state Route 200, also known as the Intercounty Connector, was fired on. Two passengers were injured by shattered glass.
Maryland Transportation Authority spokesman Lt. Kevin Ayd told The Sun that the shots appeared to come from a wooded area, and not another vehicle. The NSA complex is about 12 miles away from the site of the earlier shooting.
The Sun reported that surveillance video shows a dark-colored Lincoln Town Car near some of the shooting scenes. The paper also reported that ballistic evidence suggests a link between the shootings.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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