A couple of young men, 18 and 20, were arrested not far from here on Saturday for a couple of weeks of random shootings at houses in the White Oak area of southern Stafford County. They are cousins. Apparently they had been going around late at night shooting at occupied homes with a rifle or shotgun (you know how the news is never clear about those things, although it’s easy to be clear about those things). Occupied homes, I emphasize. However, nobody was hurt (that we know of). Over a two week period they shot at at least eleven homes.

Now, very close to the time this started, police alerted us to another young man, 17, gone missing. This young man was last seen seven miles by road, or less than two miles as the crow flies, from the residence of one of the shooters. He was last seen the evening before the shootings began.

I could see a number of hypothetical scenarios that could connect and relate the two events.

Perhaps something went wrong between the three of them, and something awful happened to the 17-year-old, and the two others were involved, and panicked, and went on a spree, acting out as the result of their panic?

Or, perhaps something went wrong, quite intentionally, and the spree is an attempt to cover up what happened to the 17-year-old, much in the way the DC sniper attack was allegedly an elaborate attempt to cover up the murder of an ex-wife or something by mixing it in among a serial crime.

We haven’t yet heard of any connection between the two separate events; I am just speculating.

I’m not mentioning any names because they’re local, and I don’t really want to become part of the news feed for these events.