Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 30, 1994                   TAG: 9411010044
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ERIC SCHMITT THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

SUSPECTED GUNMAN SPENT 3 1/2 YEARS IN MILITARY PRISON

Law enforcement authorities identified the suspect as Francisco Martin Duran, a 26-year-old hotel worker from Security, Colo., a suburb of Colorado Springs. He was employed at the Broadmoor Hotel, in Colorado Springs, officials said.

Duran recently disappeared after telling his wife, Ingrid, that he was going out to buy some supplies for target practice, said Deputy Jim Groth, a spokesman for the El Paso County Sheriff's Office, in Colorado Springs. She filed a missing person's report with the sheriff's office Oct. 1, the day after he disappeared. She said she told police that he left with his 1989 Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck.

Duran enlisted in the Army in 1987 and was assigned as an infantryman to the 25th Infantry Division, in Hawaii, law-enforcement officials and an Army spokesman said. Soon after, though, he was convicted of aggravated assault with a vehicle and drunk and disorderly conduct, said Maj. Frank Phillips, an Army spokesman.

Duran was jailed at Fort Leavenworth, the military's main prison, and given a dishonorable discharge upon his release in 1991, Phillips said.

Neighbors described Duran as an upholsterer and said that he dressed in camouflage day and night, The Associated Press reported.

shortly before the incident Saturday, Duran grilled a fellow bystander on the man's views on the nation's immigration policy.

Robert E. Haines, 47, who identified himself as a self-employed information broker and a former energy specialist from Colorado State University, said that shortly before the shooting Duran struck up a conversation with him on the Pennsylvania Avenue sidewalk north of the White House.

Haines said Duran had overheard him tell another tourist that he planned to run for president in 1996 as an independent. Duran questioned Haines about what his immigration policies would be if he became president.

Haines, who was with his 16-month-old son, Robert, said he finally became exasperated with Duran and told him: ``Sir, I'm sorry, but you have asked me several questions already,'' and then left.

Other witnesses said that for most of the time that Duran was there, there was nothing about him that would have made him stand out among the usual tourists and passersby who often gather in front of the White House on weekends. But shortly before the firing began, he was looking around him as if he were checking for Secret Service agents or police officers, they said.