Police: Shooting spree turned random after first attack

SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) — The shooting spree began with a domestic slaying in an unusually public place.

According to police, Eulalio Tordil, a federal security officer, shot and killed his estranged wife as she waited to pick up her children in the parking lot of a suburban Washington high school on Thursday afternoon.

Plainclothes officers spotted Tordil's car at a strip mall across the street from the supermarket, and they watched him for more than an hour as he moved from store to store, eating at Boston Market and getting coffee at Dunkin' Donuts, police said.

Hank Stawinski, the police chief in neighboring Prince George's County, where the school shooting took place, lamented that his detectives couldn't find Tordil sooner.

The arrest occurred in full view of dozens of witnesses who were working, shopping, eating lunch or getting their nails done.

The arrest took place just steps away from a Michaels craft store that was the first target of D.C. sniper John Allen Muhammad.

Muhammad's shot into the store did not hit anyone, but he killed a man about a mile away less than an hour later, kicking off a three-week killing spree that left 10 dead.