Shooter

Bullets were flying everywhere when cops happened to drive into gunfire on the battlefield of a drug war in North Philadelphia in 1997. Three were lucky to escape with their lives. One bullet shattered a police vehicle and Officer John Ruane was hit in the back by another. Fortunately, he was wearing a bulletproof vest and suffered only a bruise. Ruane, then 26, was hit after he got out of his vehicle and was inching his way behind parked cars toward the shooting scene near 8th and Cambria streets at about 10 p.m. on Nov. 25, 1997.

Terrell Myers has played 104 games for St. Joseph's. He has started just 10. No matter. The senior, whom some of the Hawks' most avid fans call the "Arc Angel," is a stone scorer. Myers warms up. The game starts. He sits on the bench, waits five minutes or so until Hawks coach Phil Martelli says it's time. It doesn't happen every night for Myers. But when he feels it, there's no more dangerous shooter in the Atlantic 10. Myers felt it early in the second half last night in a 71-53 win over Fordham at Alumni Memorial Fieldhouse.

He was, at his best, The Boston Strangler. Android. Andrewwww. But through the last three NBA seasons, stained with controversy, splotched with injuries, Andrew Toney had become an innocuous shadow of himself. He had recurring pain in his feet, he was unable to play regularly or for extended periods of time. He was, in a sense, wasting away. "I played for the Celtics when he was called The Boston Strangler and Android," 76ers guard Gerald Henderson was saying last night as the news broke that Toney was on the verge of retiring.

OFFICER BRAD FOX, a seven-year veteran of the Plymouth Township police department and a former Marine who served two tours of duty in Iraq, was fatally shot in the line of duty Thursday just a day before his 35th birthday, Montgomery County authorities said. The alleged shooter was caught and killed, authorities said. "There are just no words that can begin to express the magnitude of this tragedy for Officer Fox's family, for his wife, for his beautiful little girl," said Risa Vetri Ferman, Montgomery County District Attorney.

Take a look at Billy McCaffrey when he shoots. With his shoulders square, eyes focused, legs in perfect position and picturesque follow-through, the result usually is the beautiful music of ball swishing through net. McCaffrey, Vanderbilt's star guard, was born to shoot. The season's statistics don't lie: 55.6 percent from the field, 51.6 percent from three- point range, 87 percent from the free-throw line and a team-high average of 20.7 points per game. Yes, McCaffrey can shoot, but Vanderbilt coach Eddie Fogler prefers to look at it another way. "I wouldn't classify Billy a shooter as much as I would classify him as a scorer," Fogler said yesterday.

Missy Light's career as a three-point shooter officially began at last season's Ardmore Rotary Tournament. Merion Mercy trailed Lower Merion by three points late in the championship game. Coach Joe D'Antonio brought Light off the bench and said, "OK, you shoot it. " Light, who had rarely shot a three-pointer in a game, nailed one at the buzzer to tie the score. Merion Mercy lost in overtime, but a long-range shooter was born. "It was great knowing I could do that," said the junior, who was 4 for 4 on three-pointers in Friday's 68-31 nonleague win over Germantown Academy.

The cops say New Year's morning came in with a bang. Some people thought firing gunshots into the air was a fun way to celebrate and get attention. The shooters didn't think that the attention would come from cops. They were wrong. Cops were stationed everywhere. William Meekens, 21, of 55th Street near Greenway Avenue, can attest to that. Two cops saw him firing shots from his front steps at about 12:15 a.m. A couple of bullets landed on a police car. Meekens was chased inside and arrested.

Lauren Schurr doesn't want to be known as just a shooter, but it is very difficult to ignore that aspect of her game. A 5-foot-10 senior at Cherokee, Schurr arguably has one of the sweetest shots in South Jersey. Few in South Jersey are better than Schurr at dialing from long distance. Last year, she set a single-season school record with 84 three-point field goals. This season in a 52-39 win over Eastern, Schurr was at her best, scoring 18 points while hitting 7 of 10 from the field, including four three-pointers.

WITH THE scoreboard clock showing fewer than 30 seconds, every player on both teams could be found at the benches. Except Billy Shank. Hey, he's a shooter, and so was his father, Bill, and opportunities to launch will never be wasted. Left-wing trey. Good. Straight-on trey. Missed. As one of Ss. Neumann-Goretti High's managers grabbed the rebound, Shank begged for the ball and begged some more. It's up. Good. "You can't leave the court with a miss. Never," Shank said, smiling.

If Yvonne Hiller killed her coworkers at the Kraft Foods baking plant in Northeast Philadelphia last week as charged, she would join a rare - but possibly emerging - breed: women as workplace killers. Women commit fewer than 5 percent of homicides and assaults in the workplace, said Larry Barton, a teacher at the FBI Academy and author of four books on crisis management and violence at work. And, as a rule, they're much less likely to kill in general than men. They tend to internalize their anger or use words rather than haul out a gun in a public place and open fire, experts say. But in the last year, several high-profile cases of women killing in the workplace have occurred, including a professor accused of killing three colleagues and wounding three others in a February rampage after being denied tenure at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.