Charleston, W. Va. ? When a sniper preyed on the Washington, D.C., suburbs last year, Jeanie Patton feared she could be next, though she lived hundreds of miles away.

“She said, ‘Mom, I’m almost afraid to go out. Something like that could happen here in West Virginia,”‘ her mother, Joyce Patton, recalled.

Jeanie Patton, 31, was shot in the head Thursday while pumping gasoline at a Speedway convenience store about five miles from her home.

Less than two hours later, 26-year-old Okey Meadows Jr. was shot in the neck at a Go-Mart. And four days earlier, Gary Carrier Jr., 34, was shot in the head while using a pay phone outside another Go-Mart in Charleston.

Authorities have expressed concern that the shootings resembled last year’s sniper shootings, which panicked the Washington area in October.

Police have confirmed that the three Charleston-area shootings could be the work of a single sniper. All three killings were after dark.

Police have acknowledged that the bullets in all three attacks were fired from the same caliber and class of weapon, all from more than 30 yards away. They have not linked the three to the same weapon.

The three victims lived about 10 miles apart, but apparently did not know each other.

Meadows, the divorced father of a 3-year-old, was getting ready for a college admissions test so he could take classes at West Virginia State College.

Members of the Church of God in Shrewsbury, W.Va., have a message concerning the shootings at convenience stores in Kanawha County. Three people have been shot to death outside convenience stores in and around Charleston, W.Va., since Aug. 10.

“He was trying to show his son that he could do anything if he put his mind to it,” said Robert Williams, a friend.

Meadows, who lived in Campbells Creek, could bench 225 pounds and sometimes would hold his mother above his head after hugging and kissing her hello.

“He’d say that was how he showed her he loved her,” said his aunt, Donna Tinsley.

Carrier also was a divorced father. He left behind three sons and one daughter.