A man was shot to death outside a Korean church in central Indiana yesterday, believed by police to be the latest victim of a lone gunman on a three-day shooting rampage that targeted a black, six Orthodox Jews and Asians.
In the third day of drive-by shooting incidents, the man, among a group of parishioners outside the church in Bloomington, Indiana, was shot to death by a man driving a car bearing the same description as the car used in previous attacks in the Chicago area and in Urbana, Illinois, a spokesman for a police task force in Chicago said.
According to police, the lone gunman was identified through his vehicle as Mr Benjamin Daniel Smith.
Mr Ricky Byrdsong (43), the former head basketball coach at Northwestern University, was gunned down on Friday night in front of two of his children as they walked near his home in the Chicago suburban of Skokie.
A few minutes earlier, the gunman shot and wounded six Orthodox Jews in Chicago's Rogers Park neighbourhood, four of whom remained in hospital in fair to good condition.
After allegedly shooting Mr Byrdsong, a black, the gunman fired at an Asian couple in their car in the more distant Chicago suburb of Northbrook.
A little more than 24 hours later at around midnight on Saturday, the same gunman fired into a group of Asian students walking down a street near the University of Illinois campus in Urbana, seriously wounding one 22-year-old man in the leg.
"A group of four to five Asian students were walking down the street when this car drove up and the driver pulled a gun out and began firing," the Champaign-Urbana police spokesman, Mr Cary Keleher, said yesterday.
Mr Keleher said police in Champaign, two hours by car from Chicago, were consulting Chicago detectives about similarities in the shootings, including the description of the car, a light blue sedan.
The car used in the Chicago area attacks was a blue Ford Taurus, with its passenger side window shot out.
A Jewish group offered a $10,000 reward for help in apprehending the gunman.
Because witnesses have told police the gunman did not say anything during the shootings, police have been reluctant to describe the attacks as racially motivated hate crimes.
"Obviously, this is an individual with a lot of hate in his heart," Chicago Police Commander, Mr David Boggs, said at a news conference yesterday.
"This person has decided, whatever his problems are, he is taking them out on the community."
Mr Boggs said the shootings were "isolated" incidents in an otherwise peaceful neighbourhood, home to many Orthodox Jews.
"We are all grieving. We are all mourning. We are all in shock," said Rabbi Zev Cohen of the Congregation Adas Yeshurun.