Quite a few tragedies occurred during the time I lived in Silver Spring Maryland and worked as a Health Consultant in D.C. , or The District, as is known there. 9-11 occurred, and soon thereafter also The DC Sniper. At the time we were suspecting a connection between the terrorists and whoever the sniper might be. For 23 horrific days, he made walking down the street a gamble between life and death. It was a stressful time for all of us. I, like all of the Dc and the Virginia and Maryland suburbs, was basically dodging, carefully running from home to car or bus or train to and from work, and hardly going anywhere else for fear of being shot. Parents were keeping their kids inside. We were scurrying away from the openness of parking lots and front and back yards and bus stops to dark hidden places the way roaches do when the lights are turned on. We joked about it at the time but the fear was real. We were scared for our lives. I remember kneeling between my car and the gas tank while holding the gas handle and filling my car full of gas while looking around me in every direction, even though looking didn’t help. The sniper was laying facedown in the backseat of a car with a gun, sticking out of a hole in the trunk from a far off distance, sometimes in parking lots across from highways or other businesses shooting at anyone. He had no special type of person he was targeting except that of a human being. I remember hearing, an hour after I had gotten home from the gym in Wheaton Maryland, that the DC sniper had just shot someone at a gas station near my gym. That was scary. I never went to that gym again, even though it was suspected that he never killed in the same area twice. We were all able to exhale again when the sniper was caught. 
The shooter was a weak-minded boy named Lee Boyd Malvo , who’s serving life at the Greensville Correctional Center near Jarratt, Virginia, and the mastermind, a grown man named John Allen Muhammed, faced the consequences by getting executed by lethal injection at 9 pm. Tonight.
http://specials.msn.com/A-List/DC-sniper.aspx?cp-searchtext=D.C.%20sniper%20set%20for%20execution&FORM=MSNHAL
1 comment:
'I remember kneeling between my car and the gas tank while holding the gas handle and filling my car full of gas while looking around me in every direction, even though looking didn’t help.'
Interesting...yes I have been cautious in life at times too.
'The sniper was laying facedown in the backseat of a car with a gun, sticking out of a hole in the trunk from a far off distance, sometimes in parking lots across from highways or other businesses shooting at anyone.'
Well, he is gone now. In my mind it is just that he was punished, but it is still a human tragedy on many levels.
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