ASHLAND, Va. (AP) – Authorities finished a painstaking search around a steakhouse where a 37-year-old man was wounded and said Sunday they assumed the attack was the work of the Washington-area sniper.

“We are acting as if it is and we will continue in that mode until we find out it is not,” said Col. Stuart Cook of the Hanover County Sheriff’s Department.

The victim was hospitalized in critical condition Sunday but doctors said they were cautiously optimistic.

Authorities said doctors had not yet managed to remove the bullet, which would be needed to establish a connection to the other shootings. Physicians planned more surgery and said they still might be able to recover the bullet.

“The prognosis is still guarded, but since he is a very healthy man and he is very young, the chances are fair to good, I would say,” said Dr. Rao Ivatury, director of trauma and critical care at MCV Hospital in Richmond.

Police said the victim, whose name was not released, was shot outside a Ponderosa steakhouse Saturday night after he and his wife stopped in Ashland, a town of 6,500, for gas and food. His wife told authorities the shot sounded like a car backfiring and said her husband took about three steps before collapsing.

The sniper shootings began Oct. 2. The most recent confirmed sniper attack was the Monday night killing of FBI analyst Linda Franklin outside a Home Depot store in Falls Church.

If the Saturday night shooting were confirmed as related to the others, it would be the first time the sniper has attacked on a weekend, and it would break the longest lull between shootings, about five days.

It would be the farthest south the sniper has traveled – Ashland is about 85 miles south of Washington. Previously, the farthest the sniper had strayed from the Washington area was Spotsylvania County, about 50 miles south of Washington.

Dozens of officers conducted a methodical, inch-by-inch search Sunday of a wooded area near the restaurant. Cook refused to discuss what, if anything, officers had found.

“The leads have been numerous and we hope they continue,” Cook told reporters during a briefing.

Some witnesses said they heard a shot coming from the woods, but nobody reported seeing the shooter.

Earlier, Ashland Police Chief Frederic Pleasants Jr. had said no evidence had been found during searches conducted immediately following the shooting.

The shooting victim underwent three hours of surgery late Saturday at MCV Hospital, hospital spokeswoman Pam Lepley said.

He was described as conscious Sunday but unable to talk because he was on a ventilator. Doctors had to remove his spleen and part of his stomach and pancreas, Ivatury said.

Ivatury said he couldn’t comment on the condition of the bullet.

Unless the bullet is removed, officials can’t conclusively determine whether it was fired from the same rifle used in 11 previous assaults – nine of them fatal — in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

However, it may be possible at least to determine whether the bullet is the same size – .223-caliber – that was used in the earlier attacks, said Dr. Paul B. Ferrara, director of Virginia’s Division of Forensic Science.

“It depends on the condition of the bullet and how badly fragmented it is,” Ferrara said Sunday. “Sometimes a firearms expert can assess or approximate the caliber of weapon by looking at X-rays from different angles.”

Pleasants said state police shut down Interstate 95 in the area immediately after the shooting was reported, as well as Route 54, where the Ponderosa is located, and Route 1, another major artery less than a quarter mile away.

“From the minute the call was received, a plan of action was put into place for setting up roadblocks,” Hanover County Sheriff’s Col. Stuart Cook said. “It was a rolling, continual thing.”

Authorities have been on the lookout since early in the investigation for a white van with a ladder rack. However, Pleasants said that after interviewing witnesses police had no suspects and no clear description of a vehicle that could be placed at the scene of Saturday’s shooting.

Russ Brickey, 26, a maintenance mechanic, said he had eaten at the Ponderosa many times and couldn’t believe the violence had made its way to Ashland.

“This is like a high-tech Mayberry,” Brickey said as he stood across the street from the restaurant. “Stuff like this isn’t supposed to happen here – period.”

Authorities in Maryland continued testing a shell casing found in a white rental truck to determine if it could be linked to the sniper attacks. Police said it would be at least Monday before they could announce whether the casing is connected to the shootings.