D.C. Sniper Goes To His Reward

Buh-bye:

JARRATT, Va. – John Allen Muhammad, the mastermind of the sniper attacks that terrorized the nation's capital region for three weeks in October 2002, was executed Tuesday. Muhammad died by injection at 9:11 p.m. at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, prison spokesman Larry Traylor said.

He said Muhammad had no final statement and that Traylor didn't hear him utter any words during the execution.

Muhammad was executed for killing Dean Harold Meyers, who was shot in the head at a Manassas gas station during a spree that left 10 dead across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

"We extend our condolences not only to the families and loved ones of the victims, but also to the family and loved ones of John Allen Muhammad," said J. Wyndal Gordon, one of Muhammad's attorneys. "It's just a tragic situation all around."

Earlier, Gordon had described Muhammad as fearless and insisted he was innocent.

"He is absolutely unafraid and he will die with dignity — dignity to the point of defiance," Gordon said.

The shootings terrorized the region, as victim after victim was shot down while doing everyday chores: going shopping, pumping gas, mowing the lawn. One child was shot while walking into his middle school.

People stayed indoors. Those who did go outside weaved as they walked or bobbed their heads to make themselves a less easy target.

The reign of terror ended on Oct. 24, 2002, when police captured Muhammad and his teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, as they slept at a Maryland rest stop in a car they had outfitted for a shooter to perch in its trunk without being detected.

Muhammad and Malvo also were suspected of fatal shootings in other states, including Louisiana, Alabama and Arizona. Malvo was sentenced to life in prison.

I mentioned to the Mothe the other day that although in recent years I have begun to feel more uncertainty about the concept of the death penalty, try as I might I can come up with no genuine compunction with regards to its application in this case.

Maybe that's because I (and my family) were, if not actually in the line of fire, at least in the line of where it had been, being semi-regular visitors to some of the gas stations, restaurant parking lots and other locales where the killings had occured.

Maybe that's because for several months I found myself casting wary glances around the perimeter every time I ventured forth from Orgle Manor to the metro, the gas station or the grocery store, and getting the creeps every time I saw a white van. (And by the way, big yips! to the Guardian Angels who stood about holding up bedsheets to screen gas station customers from the sniper's gaze.)

Maybe that's because of the utterly clinical senselessness of the killings. The article mentions the little kid who was gunned down. All the other deaths were equally heinous in their random strikes against the innocent. I remember in particular the Home Despot customer walking out to their car, and the metro bus driver, shot as he stood on the steps of his own bus.

Ah, weel....to paraphrase Captain Jack Aubrey, may the Lord have mercy on his soul, for the law will have none.