Rockville, Md. ? Police declared the Washington-area sniper shootings solved Thursday. In custody was a veteran of the Persian Gulf War and a teenage companion who authorities say has been implicated in a deadly robbery. Police said a rifle found in their car matched the murder weapon.

Neither man had been charged in the killings as of Thursday evening, and their alleged motive remained unclear. But acquaintances said both men sometimes expressed anti-American sentiments, and whatever the motive, police believe the suspects shot 13 people innocent men, women and a 13-year-old boy from a distance and then ran. Ten of the shooting victims died.

Police said a trail of tips and clues that stretched from the Washington, D.C., area to Alabama and Washington state led a federal SWAT team to a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice. It was parked at a rest stop off Interstate 70 in Frederick County, Md., about 50 miles northwest of the nation’s capital.

Inside the car, police found John Allen Muhammad, 41, who changed his name from John Allen Williams when he converted to Islam, and John Lee Malvo, 17, a Jamaican native who apparently is not Muhammad’s stepson, despite reports that he is.

The two were asleep. Officers captured them without additional violence. It was 3:19 a.m.

A search of the Chevy Caprice produced a rifle that ballistics tests later concluded was the same weapon employed during the three-week reign of terror, police said. Officers also found a sighting scope and a tripod.

The car reportedly was modified so a shooter could lie on the back seat and fire out of the trunk. That, experts said, could explain why no shell casings were found at most of the shooting sites.

Ten people have been killed and three critically wounded since the snipings began Oct. 2. The hit-and-run attacks frightened millions of people in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, and dominated the nation’s attention.

In this view from video, federal agents search a 1990 Chevrolet Caprice police now say was used by the Washington-area snipers. John Allen Muhammad, 41, and John Lee Malvo, 17, were arrested early Thursday at a highway rest stop after they were found sleeping in the car. A military-style, .223-caliber rifle allegedly seized from the two suspects has been linked by ballistics tests to the shootings, authorities announced Thursday night.

The victims were shot as they performed mundane activities. They shopped, they stood beside a bus, they cut grass or pumped gasoline, they walked out of a restaurant or into a school.

And now, authorities said, it was over.

Collective sigh of relief

“Tonight, people in the Washington metropolitan region are breathing a collective sigh of relief, hearing the news,” Doug Duncan, executive of Montgomery County, Md., said Thursday night.

Appearing in court for the first time late Thursday, Muhammad was ordered held without bail by federal Magistrate Beth Gesner in Baltimore.

Muhammad was led into the court with hands cuffed behind his back, then was uncuffed so he could sit. He wore a green prison jumpsuit. He politely answered a series of questions posed by Gesner.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“No, ma’am” he said.

Muhammad was being held on a federal firearms charge related to his possession of the rifle in violation of a restraining order obtained in Tacoma by his second wife, Mildred Muhammad.

The sniper shootings were never mentioned in open court, while prosecutors work out jurisdictional issues involving the shootings.

After the proceedings Muhammad’s lawyer, public defender Jim Wyda, said: “Unfortunately, situations like this breed a great deal of speculation and potential for error.”

Many hours after the pair was seized, police realized Muhammad had slipped through their fingers Oct. 8, before the final five victims were shot.

Police in Baltimore stopped him early that day outside a doughnut shop, where he was asleep at the wheel of his Caprice. After checking him for outstanding warrants and proper license and registration, officers allowed him to leave, according to Ragina Avarella, a spokeswoman for the Baltimore Police.

Case breaker

The break in the case came when a call to police mentioned a fatal liquor-store heist in Montgomery, Ala. Evidence from that crime led, circuitously, to a home in Tacoma, Wash., and then to the blue Chevy in Maryland, police said.

One of Muhammad’s two ex-wives and several of his former military officers said Thursday that he had one serious blemish: “He had a short fuse,” said Donald Wilsdon, once Muhammad’s platoon sergeant.

“He was a very nice guy, an all-American kind of guy … but he seemed to have some problems with authority,” said Rafael Miranda, 41, of New Orleans, Muhammad’s former detachment commander in the Louisiana National Guard. “He would just get mad at silly little things and go into a rage. He had an anger-management problem.”

One of Muhammad’s former wives, Mildred Williams, said in court documents that he “threatened to kill me” when she was in Tacoma General Hospital in May 2000. Their marriage was unraveling at the time.

“I am in fear for my life,” she wrote in a request for a restraining order. “He has made threats to destroy me. I am frightened for my children’s safety.”

She told hospital security officers that Muhammad “can make a weapon out of anything” and was “skilled in hand-to-hand fighting.”

By Thursday evening, authorities said they were certain they had their men. Prosecutors were scheduled to meet today to discuss charges and work out jurisdictional and other issues.

A search of the Chevy Caprice produced a rifle that used the same type of .223-caliber ammunition as the weapon that was used in the shootings, police said. Officers also found a sighting scope and a tripod. Ballistics tests were under way.

Rifle favored by police

The rifle found was a Bushmaster semiautomatic, according to the arrest warrant. It uses a 10-round magazine and has a 16-inch barrel. It is considered highly accurate to a range of 50 yards. It sells for about $850. It is made by a company called Bushmaster Firearms.

Allen Faraday, vice president of the Maine-based company, said investigators provided the company with the rifle’s serial number. He said that rifle was shipped in June to a distributor in the Tacoma area, where Muhammad and Malvo lived for some time.

“This is a favorite with police departments because it’s easy to handle,” Faraday said.

The key break in the case, according to officials of the sniper task force, came during the weekend with a call to a tip line. The caller apparently claimed credit for the shootings and linked them to a Sept. 21 liquor store robbery in Montgomery, Ala.

Two women were shot during that robbery and one of them died. Officials said Malvo’s fingerprint was found at the scene, and that eventually led to Tacoma. After searching the pair’s house in that Pacific Northwest city, authorities issued a nationwide alert Wednesday night for the Caprice.

At 1 a.m. Thursday, a motorist and an attendant spotted the car at the rest stop near Frederick, Md.

Cross-jurisdictional issues

By the end of the day, police said the case essentially was solved.

Legal experts said authorities would have several options as they began preparing for a criminal case stretching across Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

One theme united authorities in all jurisdictions Thursday night: a sense that it was over.

At Montgomery County Police Headquarters in Rockville, Capt. Nancy Demme, who has served as a spokeswoman, appeared relaxed for the first time in three weeks.

Beneath her police uniform, she still wore a bulletproof vest, but she smiled several times. At the same time, though, the stress and horror of the situation the toll it took on police and everyone else in the region remained evident.

At one point, a reporter asked if the suspects would be brought to Rockville Police headquarters, the command center for the multi-agency task force investigating the shootings.

Said Demme: “We wouldn’t do that to them.”