At an Exxon station just off Interstate 64 in Waynesboro, news of the highway shootings caused some concern for travelers yesterday.

But for one driver, at least, it didn't create the paranoid fear spread by the Interstate 95 snipers in 2002.

"Now, with that, I was afraid to come out of my house," said Kevin Proctor, 33, a Washington resident gassing up a company truck for the plumbing business that employs him.

Proctor had been working in Crozet in Albemarle County and heard about the shootings on television. He intended to spend the night at a nearby hotel. He travels I-64 frequently and has no plans to change his routes between Waynesboro and Washington, he said.

"I'm usually by myself," he said. "If I had my wife and kids with me, I'd think about that."

The road was back to normal by mid-afternoon yesterday, save for a stepped-up presence of Virginia State Police cruisers. Only the satellite trucks from news-media crews at a rest area and an overpass seemed out of place.

At the gas station, David Lloyd, 22, of Athens, Ga., wondered if the shootings were part of a gang initiation. He was returning from contract work as a medical-equipment technician at Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville.

"You have to wonder what the motive is. You just don't go around shooting people like that," he said.

He uses I-64 for work and said he has no plans to alter his driving pattern during the investigation.

"We've gotta save time and fuel. With fuel prices the way they are, you just have to go where you're going," he said.

Madeline Luce of Ruckersville had to pick up her husband from his job in Stuarts Draft, just south of the interchange in Augusta County.

"It's very scary," said Luce, 43, a massage therapist. "I don't understand why we can't get rid of some of the guns out there."

She said she'll rethink some of her trips into the Shenandoah Valley during the investigation. She glanced in the direction of the new shopping center across the interstate where major stores still are being added.

"I was going to come up to the Kohl's [today]. Now, it looks like I'm not," she said. "I just hope this comes to a resolution quickly."

Contact Calvin R. Trice at (540) 932-3674 or ctrice@timesdispatch.com.