CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Investigators said yesterday that two of last week's three slayings outside West Virginia convenience stores appear to have been drug-related, not the acts of a sniper choosing victims at random.
Ballistic tests show a .22-caliber rifle was used in the shootings of two victims shot about 90 minutes apart at convenience stores 10 miles from each other, Kanawha County Chief Deputy Phil Morris said.
"We can't eliminate the possibility of a sniper, but it appears like it is drug related," Morris said.
Ballistic tests were incomplete for the third victim, shot four days earlier in Charleston. However, Morris said the characteristics of the bullet are similar to those of the bullets in the other two shootings.
Morris declined to comment on potential suspects.
Residents in Campbells Creek -- home of victims Jeanie Patton, 31, and Okey Meadows Jr., 26 -- had raised concerns that their Aug. 14 deaths may have been related to drugs.
Similar concerns had not been raised in the death of 44-year-old Gary Carrier Jr. four days earlier while he was making a telephone call outside a Charleston convenience store.
"We weren't pursuing the drug angle. We didn't have anything in the past to link that person with drugs," Charleston Police Chief Jerry Pauley said.
All three were shot in the head or neck between 10:20 p.m and 11:30 p.m.
Police also released enhanced photographs yesterday of a Ford F-150 extended cap pickup similar to a vehicle that eyewitnesses to the Campbells Creek shootings have described as being at the scene.
The notion that someone had been shooting people at random in the Kanawha Valley never sounded very plausible to David Roy, of nearby Point Lick Hollow.
"We always thought those shootings were drug-related, and the police should know it too," Roy said. "Pills and meth and the hard stuff has swept through here just over the last couple of years."
For the most part, however, Campbells Creek is a quiet, well-kept, rural community about 10 miles east of the state capital where neighbors keep an eye out for one another and are quick to offer help to anyone in need. Up and down the hollow, churches are a far more common site than bars.
"We've got Bible pushers and drug users and regular people like me," Roy said. "I may have long hair and tattoos, but I don't smoke or drink and I go to work every day."
Midge Rader, Patton's aunt, said Tuesday that the substitute cook and custodian for Kanawha County schools was drug-free. "She was never on drugs and she never drank," Rader said.
Meadows' family did not return calls seeking comment.
Morris said Campbells Creek residents' concerns about the extent of drug dealing in the area was a surprise to his investigators.
"Until this double homicide, the community hasn't spoken out," Morris said. "We knew there were drugs on Campbells Creek, but not to the extent the public is telling us now."
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