John Kenneth Muhammad...The Gates Of Hell Await You

Beltway sniper to die today by lethal injection in jail execution chamber


HE BECAME known as the "Beltway sniper" after the road ringing the US capital, Washington DC.
For three weeks in October 2002, two US states were gripped by fear as John Allen Muhammad and his teenage accomplice, John Lee Malvo, killed ten people in a series of random attacks.Today, Muhammad will die by lethal injection in an execution chamber in Virginia.The US Supreme Court has refused to block the execution, which is officially for the slaying of Dean Harold Meyers at a petrol station during the shooting spree.Beginning on 2 October, Muhammad and Malvo, who was then 17, shot a total of 13 people with a high-powered rifle, firing from the boot of a modified Chevrolet sedan. Ten people died. Authorities finally tracked down the pair at a rest stop off a main highway in Maryland.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 suburb where she lived during the attacks, and some of the incidents occurred nearby.The first victim was James Martin, shot dead in the early hours of the morning in the car park of a grocery shop in Wheaton, a northern Washington suburb. Early the next morning, a landscape gardener was fatally shot in nearby Rockville, also by a .223-calibre bullet. Then a taxi driver, at a petrol station not far away, was hit. There was another shooting half an hour later, just up the road, of a woman who was reading on a bench. Within 90 minutes, another woman was gunned down while vacuuming her van at a service station.The next day, a woman was wounded in a craft shop car park in Fredericksburg, Virginia, 80 miles from Washington.Fear reigned. People stayed indoors, afraid to go shopping or go for petrol. The authorities recommended ways to avoid becoming targets. Schoolchildren were kept inside at playtime.Then came a three-day lull. But on 7 October, Iran Brown, 13, was shot in the chest as he was dropped off at school in Bowie, Maryland, east of Washington.Charles Moose, the Montgomery County police chief, said: "Shooting a kid – it's getting to be really, really personal now." There were three more fatal shootings in Virginia the next week then another break.Then on 19 October, a man was shot outside a steakhouse in Ashland, Virginia, about 90 miles south of Washington. Three more days passed quietly before bus driver Conrad Johnson was killed in Aspen Hill, Maryland. On 24 October, police captured Muhammad and Malvo at the rest stop, about 50 miles north-west of Washington.Steve Murchake, 59, a tax accountant from Silver Spring, Maryland, remembered helicopters roaring overhead seemingly every morning as he started his commute to Herndon, Virginia, and the checkpoints that snarled Beltway traffic after nearly every shooting. Police focused on white utility vans and white box trucks, which witnesses had spotted – coincidentally, it turned out – near some of the shootings.House painter Jose Romero, 39, of Silver Spring, left his white van and took his car to work to avoid being stopped by police. Like so many others, he imagined crosshairs trained on him when he stopped for petrol.People still wonder if the pair killed more people. In 2006, Malvo reportedly confessed to four shootings in other US states, including two killings. Malvo is currently serving a life sentence in prison.

from The Scotsman