The DC Sniper Attacks

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 other victims were critically injured in several
locations throughout the Washington Metropolitan Area and along Interstate 95 in Virginia. It was widely
speculated that a single sniper, initially identified as a white man with assumed military experience, 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 of the deaths.
In September 2003, Muhammad was sentenced to death. One month later, Boyd Malvo was sentenced to
six consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. On November 10, 2009, Muhammad was
executed by lethal injection.
Preliminary shootings
On August 1, 2002, John Gaeta was changing a tire at a parking lot in Hammond, Louisiana and was shot
in the neck by Malvo. The bullet exited through Gaeta's back, and he pretended to be dead while Malvo
stole his wallet. Gaeta ran to a service station after the shooter left and discovered that he was bleeding;
he went to a hospital and was released within an hour. On March 1, 2010, he received a letter of apology
from Malvo.
On September 5, 2002, at 10:30 p.m., 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 Allen Muhammad's car when he and Malvo were arrested.
On September 21, 2002, at 12:15 a.m., 41-year-old Million A. Woldemariam was fatally shot in the head
and back with a .22-caliber pistol in Atlanta, Georgia. Woldemariam was helping the owner of a Sammy's
Package Store close up for the night when the shooting occurred.
Nineteen hours later on the same day, Claudine Parker, a liquor store clerk in Montgomery, Alabama,
was shot and killed during a robbery. Her co-worker, Kellie Adams, was injured, but survived. 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.
On September 23, 2002, at 6:30 p.m., 45-year-old Hong Im Ballenger was shot in the head and killed with
a Bushmaster rifle in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Muhammad and Malvo were linked to the killing.
Washington, D.C. area attacks
At 5:20 p.m. on October 2, 2002, 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 6:30 p.m., James
Martin, a 55-year-old program analyst at NOAA, was shot and killed at 2201 Randolph Road in the
parking lot of a Shoppers Food Warehouse grocery store, located in Wheaton.
On the morning of October 3, four people were shot within a span of approximately two 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 7:41 a.m., James L. Buchanan, a 39-year-old landscaper known as "Sonny", was shot dead at
11411 Rockville Pike near Rockville, Maryland. Buchanan was shot while mowing the grass at
the Fitzgerald Auto Mall.
At 8:12 a.m., 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.
At 8:37 a.m. Sarah Ramos, a 34-year-old babysitter and housekeeper, was killed at 3701
Rossmoor Boulevard at the Leisure World Shopping Center in Norbeck. She had gotten off a bus,
and was seated on a bench, reading a book.
At 9:58 a.m., in what was to be the last killing of the morning, 25-year-old Lori Ann LewisRivera 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 9:15 p.m. 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. The pattern was not
detected until after the shootings occurred on October 3.
Fear quickly spread throughout the region as news of the shootings spread. 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. Other school districts in the area also took precautionary measures,
keeping students indoors.
At this point Malvo and Muhammad started covering a wider area and taking more time between
shootings. On October 4, 43-year-old Caroline Seawell was wounded at 2:30 p.m. in the parking lot of an
MJ Designs Craft Store (now Michaels) 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 8:09 a.m., 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 at 4901 Collington Road
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 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 three
separate lines on the back, "For you mr. Police." "Code: 'Call me God'." and "Do not release to the press."
Two days later, on October 9 at 8:18 p.m., 53-year-old Dean Harold Meyers was shot dead while
pumping gasoline at a Sunoco gas station at 7203 Sudley Road in Prince William County, Virginia, near
the city of Manassas.
Again, two days later, on the morning of October 11 at 9:30 a.m., 53-year-old Kenneth Bridges was shot
dead while pumping fuel at an Exxon station off Interstate 95 in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, near
Fredericksburg.
On October 14, at 9:15 p.m., 47-year-old Linda Franklin, an FBI intelligence analyst who was a resident
of Arlington County, Virginia, was shot dead at Arlington Boulevard and Patrick Henry Drive after she
finished shopping at a Home Depot with her husband in Fairfax County, Virginia, just outside Falls

Church at Seven Corners Shopping Center. 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 8:00 p.m. in a parking lot
near the Ponderosa steakhouse at State Route 54 in Ashland, Virginia, about 90 miles south of
Washington, near Interstate 95. Hopper survived. Authorities discovered a four-page letter from the
shooter in the woods.
On October 21, Richmond-area police arrested two men, one with a white van, outside a gas station. 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 5:56 a.m. while standing on the
steps of his bus at the 14100 block of Grand Pre Road 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. Second, in a yard in Takoma, police
searched with metal detectors for bullets, shell casings, or other evidence that might provide a link to the
shooters. A tree stump believed to have been used for target practice was seized.
Public reaction
During the period of the attacks, the North American media devoted enormous amounts of air time and
newspaper space to each new attack. By the middle of October 2002, all news television networks
provided live coverage of the aftermath of each attack, with the coverage often lasting for hours at a time.
The Fox show America's Most Wanted devoted an entire episode to the shooters in hopes of aiding in
their capture. Much of the coverage of the case in The New York Times was written by Jayson Blair and
subsequently found to be fabricated; the ensuing scandal led the newspaper's two top editors, Howell
Raines and Gerald Boyd, to resign.
During the weeks that the attacks occurred, fear of the apparently random shootings generated a great deal
of public apprehension, especially at service stations and the parking lots of large stores. People pumping
gasoline at gas stations would walk around their cars quickly, hoping that they would be a harder target to
hit. Some stations put up tarps around the awnings over the fuel pumps so people would feel safer. Also,
many people would attempt to fuel their vehicles at the Naval Base of the National Naval Medical Center,
as they felt it was safer inside the guarded fence. Various government buildings such as The White
House, U.S. Capitol, and the Supreme Court building, and memorial tourist attractions at The Mall in
Washington DC also received heightened security. Drivers of white vans or box trucks were viewed with
suspicion from other motorists as initial media reports indicated the suspect may be driving such a
vehicle.
After the specific threat against children was delivered, many school groups curtailed field trips and
outdoors athletic activities based upon safety concerns. At the height of the public fear, some school
districts, such as Henrico County Public Schools and Hanover County Public Schools, after the Ponderosa
shooting, simply closed school for the day. Other schools such as the MJBHA, cancelled all outdoor
activities after the shooting at the Connecticut and Aspen Hill intersection. Others changed after-school
procedures for parents to pick up their kids to minimize the amount of time children spent in the open.

Extra police officers were placed in schools because of this fear. In addition to this, Joel Schumacher's
film Phone Booth was deemed potentially upsetting enough that its release was delayed for months.
Investigation
The investigation was publicly headed by the Montgomery County Police Department and its Police
Chief, Charles Moose. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the FBI, the
Secret Service, the Virginia Department of Transportation, and police departments in other jurisdictions
where shootings took place, provided assistance in the investigation.
Police responded within minutes to reports of attacks during the three weeks of the sniper attacks,
cordoning off nearby roads and highways and inspecting all drivers, thereby grinding traffic to a halt for
hours at a time. Police canvassed the area, talking to people, and collected surveillance tapes.
By Friday night, October 4, the five shootings on October 3 and two on October 2 were forensically
linked to the same gun.
Eyewitness accounts of the attacks were mostly confused and spotty. Hotlines set up for the investigation
were flooded with tips, as was the post office box set up for tips by e-mail. Early tips from eyewitnesses
included reports of a white box truck with dark lettering, speeding away from the Leisure World shopping
center, with two men inside. Police across the area and the state of Maryland were pulling over white vans
and trucks. A gray car was spotted speeding away after the October 4 shooting in Spotsylvania.
The shooter attempted to engage the police in a dialogue, compelling Moose to tell the media cryptic
messages intended for the sniper. 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."[14] This information
was leaked to the press and misquoted often as "I am God" or some similar misquote 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.
A telephone call from the shooter(s) was traced to a pay telephone at a gasoline station in Henrico
County, Virginia. Police missed the suspects by a matter of a few minutes, and initially detained
occupants of a van at another pay telephone at the same intersection.
On the phone call, the sniper, boasting of his cleverness, also mentioned a previous unsolved murder in
"Montgomery". This was identified as the September 21 shooting at a liquor store in Montgomery,
Alabama. 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 John Allen Muhammad.
Despite an apparent lack of progress publicly, federal authorities were making significant headway in
their investigation and developed leads in Washington state, Alabama, and New Jersey. 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 3 October, D.C. police stopped the Caprice for a "minor traffic infraction," two hours prior to the
shooting of Pascal Charlot, after which witnesses reported seeing a Caprice near the scene.
On October 8, Baltimore city police investigated a dark blue Chevrolet Caprice with a person sleeping
inside parked near the Jones Falls Expressway at 28th St. in Baltimore. The officers were concerned that
the driver's license was from Washington state and the vehicle tag was from New Jersey. Despite the fact
that the vehicle was suspicious enough for them to investigate, and the fact that the vehicle fit the
description of a vehicle associated with the shooting in D.C. five days earlier, the officers did not question
the occupants extensively, nor did they search the vehicle.
Authorities were quick to issue a media alert to the public to be on the lookout for a dark blue Chevrolet
Caprice sedan. 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 in
Bordentown, New Jersey.
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 Whitney Donahue, who noticed the parked
car. (Four hours earlier, Montgomery County police chief Charles Moose had relayed this cryptic
message to the sniper: "You have indicated that you want us to do and say certain things. You have asked
us to say, 'We have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose'. We understand that hearing us say this is
important to you". Moose asked the media "to carry the message accurately and often". This mysterious
and arguable reference to a Cherokee fable has never been explained.)
Maryland State Police Trooper First Class D. Wayne Smith was the first to arrive to the scene and
immediately utilized his light blue unmarked police vehicle to block off the exit by positioning the car
sideways between two parked tractor-trailers. As more troopers arrived at the scene the rest area was
effectively sealed off at both the entrance and exit ramps without the suspects being aware of a rapidly
growing police presence. Later, as truck driver Ron Lantz was attempting to exit the rest area, his tractortrailer was commandeered by troopers who used the truck, in place of the police car, to complete the
roadblock at the exit. With the suspects' escape route sealed off, the officers then moved in to arrest them.
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.
Conclusions of investigations
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 reflex sight at ranges of between 50 and over 100 yards.
The trunk of the Chevrolet Caprice was modified to serve as "rolling sniper's nest". The back seat was

modified to allow a person access to the trunk. Once inside, the sniper could lay prone, with shots taken
from a small hole near the license plate created for that purpose.
Motive
Investigators and the prosecution suggested during pre-trial motions that Muhammad intended to kill his
ex-wife Mildred, who had estranged him from his children. According to this theory, the other shootings
were intended to cover up the motive for the crime, since Muhammad believed that the police would not
focus on an estranged ex-husband as a suspect if she looked like a random victim of a serial killer.
Muhammad frequented the neighborhood where she lived during the attacks, and some of the incidents
occurred nearby. Additionally, he had earlier made threats against her. Mildred herself made the claim
that she was his intended target. However, Judge LeRoy Millette, Jr. prevented prosecutors from
presenting that theory during the trial, saying that a link had not been firmly established.
While imprisoned, Malvo wrote a number of erratic diatribes about what he termed "jihad" against the
United States. "I have been accused on my mission. Allah knows I'm gonna suffer now", he wrote.
Because his rants and drawings featured not only such figures as Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein,
but also characters from the film series The Matrix, these musings were dismissed as immaterial. Some
investigators reportedly said they had all but eliminated terrorist ties or political ideologies as a motive.
Nonetheless, in at least one of the ensuing murder trials, a Virginia court found Muhammad guilty of
killing "pursuant to the direction or order" of terrorism.
At the 2006 trial of Muhammad, Malvo testified that the aim of the killing spree was to kidnap children
for the purpose of extorting money from the government and to "set up a camp to train children how to
terrorize cities", with the ultimate goal being to "shut things down" across the United States.
Execution of John Allen Muhammad
In the days leading up to his execution, John Allen Muhammad spent time with his lawyer working out a
final appeal to the Supreme Court. It was reported that the two had become close friends, with
Muhammad telling his lawyer "I love you, brother" and granting him permission to write a book about the
trial.
John Allen Muhammad was executed by lethal injection at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt,
Virginia on November 10, 2009. The execution procedure began at 9:06 p.m. EST; Muhammad was
pronounced dead five minutes later. It was reported that when asked if he had any last words, Muhammad
made no reply. Twenty-seven people witnessed his execution including victims' family members.