Wixom, Mich., Shooting Suspect Is Arrested

Stephen McGee for The New York Times

The suspect, Raulie Wayne Casteel, whose picture was displayed at a news conference, offered no motive for the attacks, officials said.

WIXOM, Mich. — He chose his targets with no discernible pattern, firing at Cadillacs, minivans and pickup trucks, at young drivers and older ones, at men on their way to work, fans heading for the ballpark and women picking up their children from school, his shooting attacks stretching through four counties along the Interstate 96 corridor.

On Tuesday, the biggest topic of discussion in this middle-class suburb northwest of Detroit was not the election results — the city split its presidential vote — but the announcement that the police had taken into custody a local man believed to be the Wixom highway gunman.

Raulie Wayne Casteel, 43, is expected to be arraigned on Friday before an Oakland County District Court judge on charges that include two counts of assault with intent to commit murder. He will participate from his jail cell in Livingston County, where he was arraigned on Wednesday in connection with a shooting there.

The police and prosecutors said they thought Mr. Casteel was responsible for 24 separate attacks, which wounded only one person, a man who was shot in the buttocks as he was driving to a World Series game. Mr. Casteel is likely to face additional state and federal charges, officials said.

The arrest ended three weeks of terror for residents of this city of about 14,000, who had been nervously eyeing every car they passed and taking side streets to avoid the highway and Wixom Road, where several vehicles were hit.

On days when the gunman was most active, the city's schools kept students inside. The annual Halloween party at a community center went on as scheduled, but with a heavy police presence. Frightened mothers called the Police Department saying they were afraid to let their children go out for ice cream cones or play on the street, said the Wixom police chief, Clarence Goodlein, whose department led a multiagency task force formed to investigate the shootings.

The city, unaccustomed to serious crime — Wixom has had no homicides this year and "I can't think of the last time we had a gunshot wound," Chief Goodlein said — settled into the realization that it was as vulnerable as anywhere else to random and senseless violence.

"We were so scared," said Delynn Harris, a waitress at Backyard Coney Island, a diner about a quarter of a mile from one of the shooting sites. "We didn't know where he was or what was going to happen next."

Like other restaurants here, the diner lost business because customers were afraid to venture out, another economic blow for a struggling city where jobs are scarce and foreclosures frequent. The Ford assembly plant on Wixom Road — the site of the city's last high-profile crime, an attack by a gunman that left one dead and three wounded in November 1996 — closed down five years ago.

Chief Goodlein said that initially, the nature of the attacks was uncertain, but it gradually became clear that they were dealing with something far more serious than a juvenile prank.

At about 7:05 p.m. on Oct. 16, a man stepped out of his house on Hopkins Drive to put out the trash and felt bullets speeding by his head. About 10 minutes later, an employee at a dance studio on Wixom Road, just around the corner, reported hearing a volley of gunfire. In the next few minutes, four cars driving in the northbound lane were hit in rapid succession.

The next day brought another shooting, in Commerce Township. The day after that Aaron Mason, the owner of a tool company, was driving his Ford Edge north on Wixom Road to visit a customer about 2:15 when he heard a loud bang.

"I thought it was actually a rock hit my windshield or my tire blew out of something; so I pulled over," Mr. Mason said. He found a bullet lodged in the driver's seat.

By 6:30 that night, reports were coming in of similar attacks on Interstate 96 and in other counties.

"We started putting it together and counting the number of incidents, and the hair on everybody's neck started to stand up," Chief Goodlein said.

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