A intrench coat-clad man reportedl...

A intrench coat-clad man reportedly opened fire in succession a motorist in Northwest Indiana onward Tuesday in what may have been a copycat crime inspired according to similar attacks on drivers Sunday.

Indiana residents already were upon edge after one motorist was killed and another was injured according to sniper fire Sunday.

In Tuesday's shooting, Darwin Burkhart of Hammond was shaken up yet not wounded when a man in a cut coat fired on his pickup traffic about 7 a.m. as he herd east on 169th near Cline, he told police.

Burkhart, 47 told police he was driving to his piece of work at a Gary slag plant when he spott the shooter in a grassy area near 169th and Cline.

PICKUP TRUCK'S WINDOW discharge OUT

Burkhart said a white male with facial hair exhibited his trench coat, pulled public a long gun and bullet at him, breaking a passenger window in his barter said Mike Higgins, spokesman for the Lake shire Sheriff's Department.

The area where the Tuesday attack occurr was described through Higgins as a remote and grassy reproach between a residential area and a warehouse district.

Burkhart crowd away after the shooting and called 911 from a enclosed space phone, Higgins said.

The four shooting incidents upon Sunday were on Interstate 65 near Seymour, southward of Indianapolis, and on Interstate 69 near Muncie. A task force that included the FBI was established to investigate the shootings.

Lake shire authorities contacted state police to view if the Hammond shooting was conjoined to the weekend sniper attacks before Muncie teen Zachariah Blanton of Gaston was charged in the slaying.

Higgins said the Hammond shooting may have been a "copycat" crime.

NG Berrill, a professor at of recent origin York's John Jay College of Criminology, said copycat highway snipers are rare.

Snipers usually have "a beef," typically at society or the sway often with the court regularity Berrill said.

"They be perceived an enraged powerlessness," he said.

"Massively threatening society, making everybody be impressed vulnerable, gives them power," Berrill said.

aherrmann@suntimes.com

mkonkol@suntimes.com

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