D.c. Sniper
Sniper)
Jump to: navigation, search
Locations of the 15 sniper attacks numbered chronologically.
The Beltway sniper attacks took place during three weeks in October 2002 in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Ten people were killed and three others critically injured in various locations throughout the Washington Metropolitan Area and along Interstate 95 in Virginia.
It was widely speculated that a single sniper was using the Capital Beltway for travel, possibly in a white van or truck. It was later learned that the rampage was perpetrated by one man, John Allen Muhammad, and one minor, Lee Boyd Malvo, driving a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice sedan, and had apparently begun the month before with murders and robbery in Louisiana and Alabama, which had resulted in three deaths. Muhammad was executed in the state of Virginia on November 10, 2009 at 9:11 pm.
Preliminary shootings
On September 5, 2002, at 10:30 pm, Paul LaRuffa, a 55-year-old pizzeria owner, was shot six times at close range while locking up his Italian restaurant in Clinton, Maryland.
LaRuffa survived the shooting and his laptop computer was found in John Muhammad's car when he and Malvo were arrested .
On September 21, 2002, Claudine Parker, a liquor store clerk in Montgomery, Alabama, was shot and killed during a robbery. Evidence found at the crime scene eventually tied this killing to the Beltway attacks and allowed authorities to identify Muhammad and Malvo as suspects, although this connection was not made until October 17.
D.M.V.
Sniper attacks
Montgomery County, Maryland
The main shootings associated with the Beltway Sniper incident began on October 2, 2002, with one victim killed that evening in Glenmont, Maryland. Four more victims were killed the next morning, and a sixth killed in the evening on October 3, 2002, with all the shooting occurring within a few miles of each other.
At 5:20pm, a shot was fired through a window of a Michaels Craft Store in Aspen Hill.
As no one was injured, no serious alarms were raised. About an hour later, at 6:30pm, James Martin, a 55-year-old program analyst at NOAA, was shot and killed in the parking lot of a Shoppers Food Warehouse grocery store, located in Glenmont.
On the morning of October 3, four people were shot within a span of approximately 2 hours in Aspen Hill, and other nearby areas in Montgomery County. Another was killed that evening in the District of Columbia, just over the border from Silver Spring.
At 7:41am, James L.
Buchanan, a 39-year-old landscaper known as "Sonny", was shot dead in Montgomery County near Rockville, Maryland. Buchanan was shot while mowing the grass at the Fitzgerald Auto Mall.
At 8:12am, 54-year-old part-time taxi driver Premkumar Walekar was killed in Aspen Hill in Montgomery County, while pumping gasoline into his taxi at a Mobil station at Aspen Hill Road and Connecticut Avenue.
Sarah Ramos, a 34-year-old babysitter and housekeeper, was killed at 8:37am at the Leisure World Shopping Center in Aspen Hill.
She had gotten off a bus, and was seated on a bench, reading a book.
At 9:58am, in what was to be the last killing of the morning, 25-year-old Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera was killed while vacuuming her Dodge Caravan at the Shell station at the intersection of Connecticut & Knowles Avenues in Kensington, Maryland.
The snipers then waited until 9:15pm before shooting Pascal Charlot, a 72-year-old retired carpenter, while he was walking on Georgia Avenue at Kalmia Road, in Washington, D.C. Charlot died less than an hour later.
In each shooting, the victims were killed by a single bullet fired from some distance.
Many parents went to pick up their children at school early, not allowing them to take a school bus or walk home alone. Montgomery County Public Schools, District of Columbia Public Schools, and private schools went into a lockdown, with no recess or outdoor gym classes.
On October 4, 43-year-old Caroline Seawell was wounded at 2:30pm in the parking lot of a Michaels Craft Store at Spotsylvania Mall in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, just outside the city of Fredericksburg, while she was loading purchases into her minivan.
On October 7, at 8:09am, Iran Brown, a 13-year-old boy, was shot — accounts vary between the lower body, stomach and chest — as he arrived at the Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, Maryland, in Prince George's County (Brown's name was concealed from the public but was later revealed). His aunt, a nurse who had just brought him to school, rushed him to a hospital emergency room.
Despite serious injuries, including damage to several major organs, Brown survived from the attack and ultimately testified at Muhammad's trial. At this crime scene the authorities discovered a shell casing as well as a Tarot card (the Death card) inscribed with the phrase, "Call me God" on the front and on the back on three separate lines the words, "For you mr. The police received what seemed to be a very good lead after the October 14 shooting, but it was later determined that the witness was inside the Home Depot at the time and was lying.
The witness was subsequently arrested for interfering with the investigation.
After a five day interval, 37-year-old Jeffrey Hopper was shot on October 19 at 8:00pm in a parking lot near the Ponderosa steakhouse in Ashland, Virginia, about 90 miles south of Washington, near Interstate 95. The men turned out to be illegal immigrants with no connection to the shooter and they were remanded in the custody of what was then the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently deported them.
The next day, October 22, bus driver Conrad Johnson was shot dead at 5:56am while standing on the steps of his bus in Aspen Hill, Maryland.
Chief Moose released part of the content of one of the shooter's communications, in which he declares, "Your children are not safe, anywhere, at any time".
While no shootings occurred on October 23, the day is significant for two events. First, ballistics experts confirmed Johnson as the tenth fatality in the Beltway shootings.
A tree stump believed to have been used for target practice was seized.
Arrest
The incident came to a close on October 24, when Muhammad and Malvo were found sleeping in their car, a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice, at a rest stop off of Interstate 70 near Myersville, Maryland, and arrested on federal weapons charges. Police were tipped off by Ron Lantz, who noticed the parked car.
Lantz used his truck to block the exit from the rest stop while he alerted police. A Bushmaster .223-caliber weapon and bipod were found in a bag in Muhammad's car.
Ballistics tests later conclusively linked the seized rifle to 11 of the 14 shootings, including one in which no one was injured.
Logistics and tactics
The attacks were carried out with the firearm found in the vehicle, a stolen Bushmaster XM-15 semiautomatic .223 caliber rifle equipped with a red-dot sight at ranges of between 50 and over 100 yards.
The sniper shot from the trunk of the car from a small hole created for that purpose.
Investigation
Charles Moose, Montgomery County Police Chief
The investigation was publicly headed by the Montgomery County Police Department and its Police Chief, Charles Moose. At several scenes Tarot cards were left as calling cards, including one Death card upon which was written "Call me God" on the front and on the back on three separate lines the words, "For you mr.
Police." "Code: 'Call me God'." "Do not release to the press." This information was leaked to the press and misquoted often as "I am God" or some similar mis quote of the actual words on the tarot card. Later scenes had long, handwritten notes carefully sealed inside plastic bags, including a rambling one that demanded $10,000,000 and threatened the lives of children in the area.
At one point, a telephone call from the shooter(s) was traced to a pay telephone at a gasoline station in Henrico County, Virginia. On October 17 authorities said they matched Malvo's fingerprint found at the Benjamin Tasker Middle School site with one lifted from the liquor store scene. After further research into Malvo's background it was discovered he had close ties to a John Allen Muhammad.
During the period of the attacks, the North American media devoted enormous amounts of air time and newspaper space to each new attack.
They learned that Muhammad’s ex-wife, who had obtained a protective order against him, lived near the Capital Beltway in Clinton, a community in suburban Prince George's County, Maryland. Information was also developed about an automobile purchased in New Jersey by Muhammad.
Much to their shock, police discovered that the New Jersey license plates issued to Muhammad on the 1990 Chevrolet Caprice had been checked by radio patrol cars several times near shooting locations in various jurisdictions in several states, but the car had not been stopped because law enforcement computer networks did not indicate that it was connected to any criminal activity and they were focused exclusively on the "white van."
On October 3, D.C.
For the public, as well as for law enforcement agencies throughout the region, this was a major change from the mysterious “white box truck” earlier sought based upon reported sightings.
The Chevrolet Caprice was also later revealed to have formerly been used as an undercover police car used in Bordentown, NJ.
Motive
Investigators and the prosecution at trial suggested that Muhammad intended to kill his ex-wife Mildred, who had estranged him from his children. According to this theory, she would appear to be just another random victim of the snipers.
Muhammad frequented the neighborhood where she lived during the attacks, and some of the incidents occurred nearby. Other charges are also pending in Maryland and other communities in Virginia.
After the initial convictions and sentencing, Will Jarvis, a Virginia prosecutor in Prince William County, stated he would wait to decide whether to try Malvo on capital charges in his jurisdiction until the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled on whether juveniles may be subject to the penalty of execution. Prosecutors in Maryland, Louisiana and Alabama were still interested in putting both Malvo and Muhammad on trial.
Simmons ruling, Malvo was 20 years old, and was held at Virginia's maximum security Red Onion State Prison in Pound in Wise County, Virginia.
"Muhammad, with his sniper team partner, Malvo, randomly selected innocent victims" Virginia Supreme Court Justice Donald Lemons wrote in the decision. A date for Muhammad's pending execution in Virginia has been set for November 10th 2009.
In return, he was sentenced to six consecutive life terms without possibility of parole on June 1, 2006.
On May 6, 2008, it was revealed that Muhammad has asked prosecutors in a letter to help him end legal appeals of his conviction and death sentence "so that you can murder this innocent black man." An appeal filed by Muhammad's defense lawyers in April 2008 cited evidence of brain damage that may render Muhammad incompetent to make legal decisions, and that he should not have been allowed to represent himself at his Virginia trial.
Malvo testimony
In John Allen Muhammad's May 2006 trial in Montgomery County, Maryland, Lee Boyd Malvo took the stand and confessed to a more detailed version of the pair's plans. Malvo claimed that he had said this in order to protect John Allen Muhammad from a potential death sentence, and because it was more difficult to obtain the death penalty for a minor.
Phase one consisted of meticulously planning, mapping, and practicing their locations around the D.C. This way after each shooting they would be able to quickly leave the area on a predetermined path, and move on to the next location.
Phase Two was intended to begin by killing a pregnant woman by shooting her in the stomach. Then, at the officer's funeral, they were to create several improvised explosive devices complete with shrapnel.
Along the way they would stop in YMCAs and orphanages recruiting other impressionable young boys with no parents or guidance. Finally, after their training was complete, John Allen Muhammad would send them out across the United States to carry out mass shootings in many different cities, just as he had done in Washington and Baltimore.
A lyric from Bob Marley's Natural Mystic 'Many more will have to suffer. 11 we will ensure will look like a picnic to you' and 'you will bleed to death little by little.'
Exhibit 65-101: Malvo's thought for the day: 'Islam the only true guidance, the way of peace.'"
In the media
On October 17, 2003, on USA Network's USA cable station, a TV movie was shown that was based on the events that occurred in 2002's sniper incident.
Mildred will appear on CNN's Larry King Live on November 9th, the day before her ex-husbands execution.
An episode of Serial..., a TLC show about serial killers, also covered the shootings.
Effects on society
Fear, targets outdoors
During the weeks that the attacks occurred, fear of the apparently random shootings generated a great deal of public apprehension, especially at gas stations and the parking lots of large stores. Also, many people would attempt to fill their gas at the Naval Base of the National Naval Medical Center, as they felt it was safer inside the guarded fence.
After the specific threat against children was delivered, many school groups curtailed field trips and outdoors athletic activities based upon safety concerns.