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I don’t have answers to most of your questions, but it’s possible he did not have a car and couldn’t use the drive thru. My guess for why he still had the gun/silencer was he wanted to keep them as a trophy. Either way, very stupid move on what was otherwise a nearly flawless assassination.
I'm guessing that getting to Altoona with no car is pretty close to impossible.
Besides the train station, there's also a grayhound terminal.
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Altoona has a train stop on the Norfolk Southern Railway, which is served by Amtrak.
Oddly, that McDonald's being shown in the news articles is the one by the highway, not the two closer to the terminal.
That could be lazy reporting, but it's unusual
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