"The person you called could not hear everything you said," Montgomery County, Md., Police Chief Charles Moose said. "The audio was unclear, and we want to get it right. Call us back."
After his message, Moose's refusal to comment on two males being held for questioning about the shootings cemented the view the men were unrelated to the sniper case.
Virginia authorities confirmed Monday they were indeed holding two men for questioning but refused to say what role, if any, they might have played.
At a news conference in Henrico County, Hanover County Sheriff Stuart Cook said ballistic evidence confirmed that a 37-year-old man shot in Ashland, Va., was connected to the 12 other shootings in the Washington area since Oct. 2.
But Cook, speaking for a Richmond-area police taskforce, refused to divulge any new details about two men arrested near an Exxon station outside of Richmond early Monday. However, there were unconfirmed television reports the two were illegal aliens and were not directly connected to the sniper attacks.
Fox News Channel reported Monday afternoon that the men were not involved in the shooting and were being turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Officials would not confirm that.
Henrico County spokesman Command Sgt. Thomas Shumate, said later that the men were being questioned.
Shortly after the arrests, Moose gave a statement to the media that followed his cryptic statement Sunday night when he said he had received a message, apparently from the killer, and that the man should call a phone number he had left at the scene of the most recent shooting in Ashland.
On Monday, Moose said investigators had received a response to Sunday night's plea and were formulating a response.
"The message that needs to be delivered is that we are going to respond to a message that we have received," Moose said. "We are preparing our response at this time."
Pathenia Fields of Royal Oldsmobile, a car dealership next to the Exxon station, told United Press International she witnessed the arrest of one of the men and the seizure of a white van by heavily armed police.
Fields said that shortly after she arrived at work at 8 a.m. police and Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau agents rushed into the dealership and asked if it was open. When the salesman replied that it was, the police said: "No it isn't, it's closed," she said.
Fields watched police set up surveillance of a man in a white van, which she said was not like the van that had been described earlier by police. But she and others immediately realized that it must have been an arrest in the sniper case.
Fields said police watched the van for a few moments through binoculars and then moved across 25 yards of parking lot with pistols and assault rifles at the ready and tried to enter the van from the passenger side. She said the police seemed to have trouble with the door being locked. They ran around to the driver's side and dragged a man out and forced him immediately to lie on the ground.
She said he was "not Caucasian, had dark hair, olive-colored skin, and appeared Hispanic." She said the man did not struggle with police, but he seemed surprised by their sudden presence.
The morning arrest comes at a time when the Richmond area is extraordinarily tense over the sniper shooting Saturday in Ashland, which took place about 15 miles from where these men were arrested.
The area is swirling with rumors about how the arrest took place.
Local radio stations, quoting unnamed sources, said that the white van, which had a Mexican flag decal on a window, was first spotted in the parking lot of the Mount Vernon Middle School, about 250 yards from the Exxon station.
According to this version, police were alerted by a parent who had brought a child to school, though the schools were closed Monday because of the sniper. The police kept the car under surveillance as it drove a block and a half to a telephone booth where the arrest was made.
A second arrest was made at a Citgo station across Parham Road from the Exxon station.
The victim of the shooting Saturday night, a 37-year-old, 200-pound, 6-foot-tall man, is in critical but stable condition, hospital officials said. He is conscious and breathing with a ventilator.
Dr. Rao Ivatury, director of the trauma department at the Medical College of Virginia Hospital in Richmond, said two surgeries had been conducted, and several organs had either been removed or repaired. He said the victim, whose name has not been released, would require three to four more over the next couple of weeks.
"He's lucky to be alive," Ivatury said.
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