The DC Sniper

We were just past the one year anniversary of the attacks, and almost to the one year anniversary of the anthrax attacks in the Congress, which closed down a Senate office building for months.

No one would realize there was something crazy happening until five people had been killed, all within a ten minute drive of my home in suburban Washington, D.C., in a county where the number of murders hardly reaches into double digits for an entire year.

The sniper team consisted of John Allen Muhammad and his accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo.  Each of them took turns firing a rifle equipped with a silencer from their parked car, shooting the weapon through a hole in the rear of the vehicle.

After killing one man on a Wednesday night at a nearby grocery store, the duo then killed a man on a riding lawnmower the next morning.

A half hour later, a man was killed while getting gas at a station that I've driven by dozens of times.

A little while after that, a woman was shot and killed outside a post office.

Then a little after 10 am on October 3, 2002, they shot and killed a woman who was vacuuming out her van at a Shell gas station.

That would be "my" Shell gas station.  The station where I had filled up my pickup for years.

The shot was fired from the parking lot next door of the Safeway grocery store.

That would be "my" Safeway grocery store.  The store where I have bought groceries for over 20 years.

Just about the time of the shooting at the Shell station from the Safeway parking lot, I was at home, getting ready to run out the door for a quick trip to that same Safeway.

I was home for the week recuperating from surgery the previous Friday.  I remember that it was a pretty day.  I needed some air and I needed some food.

I was almost out the door when the phone rang.  It was a buddy of mine who is a cameraman.  Instead of running to the store, I yakked with him on the phone for 20 minutes.

By then, there were helicopters in the air and the local TV stations had broken into programming with news of a possible murderous rampage.

Luckily, the phone call had kept me from stumbling into the midst of it.

For several weeks after that, fear gripped this city and its suburbs.

We didn't go out at night.  People crouched down behind their cars while filling up at gas stations.  They ran through parking lots in a zigzag, like a navy destroyer trying to avoid a submarine.

I remember going into that Safeway about a week after the shootings at 10 pm.  Usually there are a lot of people in there shopping, even at that hour.

That night it was me and one other woman, who was dressed in her jogging clothes.  We started out at the same time, looked at each other, and started running like hell for our cars, without saying a word.

One night, my wife was coming home from seeing friends in Virginia.  There had been a shooting to the South of D.C. that evening, and the police had set up roadblocks on the bridge going over the Potomac River.

She called me in hysterics, crying about the spotlights, the heavily armed police who were stopping all cars on the interstate in a search for the Sniper.

Seven years later, as in last month, I was taking the family van out to the gas station to vacuum out the dirt and the Cheerios.

I stopped at the same ole Shell gas station and went to the coin operated vaccum.  The same vaccum where a 25 year old woman was felled by one bullet while cleaning out her minivan.

Before dropping in my coins, I looked across at the Safeway parking lot.  I looked over at the row of parking spaces along Howard Avenue, where Muhammad and Malvo had parked, and then taken aim at their fourth victim of the day.

And I shook my head.