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October 11, 2002
There are now nine victims of a mysterious killer in the Washington,
D.C., area. Here's a look back at how the horror unfolded,
shot by shot, day by day.
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(Washington-AP) -- There was nothing powerful about the sound.
It was, an assistant store manager says, something like a
lightbulb popping. And there was nothing cataclysmic about
the damage -- just a small hole in the display window, about
the size of a marble.
It was 5:20 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 2, and an epic nightmare
was beginning.
But no one knew it -- no one, that is, except the person who
fired the rifle into a busy Michaels crafts store at the Northgate
Plaza shopping center in Aspen Hill.
No one was injured or killed by the single rifle blast. But
then the sniper's aim turned deadly.
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It is 6:04 p.m., 44 minutes after the shot pierced the store
window. James D. Martin is in the parking lot of the Shoppers
Food Warehouse in Wheaton, a mile away from Michaels.
Martin, a 55-year-old program analyst for a federal department,
has been shopping. But not for himself -- he is buying stuff
for the kids at Shepherd Elementary School in Washington.
People in his department at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration's Office of Marine and Aviation Operations
serve as mentors there,
and Martin is devoted.
The lot is full -- cars are waiting in line for spaces --
but the
report of the gun resounds over the sounds of idling engines.
Across the street, officers at a district police station jump
to their feet and out to the street, looking for the source.
But some shoppers are unaware. One walks by, assuming the
figure on the ground is merely a motorist working under his
car. When the officers find him, they perform CPR, but to
no avail. Martin -- Civil War buff, ardent volunteer, father
of an 11-year-old son -- is dead.
This alone is a peculiar thing for this community.
Montgomery County is not to be confused with the neighboring
District of Columbia. It is Maryland's most affluent; "violent
crime is not regarded as a serious problem," says the
county Web site.
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At 7:41 a.m. Thursday, the sky is a brilliant blue. James
L.
"Sonny" Buchanan cuts the grass at the Fitzgerald
Auto Mall on Rockville Pike in the county's White Flint area.
Buchanan is a 39-year-old poet, a self-employed landscaper
who likes to teach children about plants.
He has moved to Virginia and a Christmas tree farm he owns
with his father, but he still comes back to Maryland and mows
the grass for the dealership, as he has for 10 years.
There's a loud sound -- like a huge object hitting the ground,
thinks body shop manager Gary Huss. Outside, Buchanan stumbles
200 feet into the lot and collapses, face forward.
A hundred dealership employees surround the bleeding man.
They, too, react to murder with disbelief -- surely, the lawnmower
exploded. When the ambulance arrives, about 10 minutes later,
emergency workers find the hole in his chest left by the bullet.
Thirty-one minutes later, 54-year-old Prem Kumar Walekar fills
the tank of his cab at the Mobil station on Aspen Hill Road
in Rockville. He immigrated 30 years ago, and worked hard
all his life to raise his two children, now in their 20s,
to help his family back in India, and to bring his siblings
to the United States.
He does not usually take to the road this early, but the day
is beautiful, and he wants to finish early and enjoy the sunshine.
Police Cpl. Paul Kukucka is nearby, driving to the funeral
of a fellow officer who died of a heart attack, when a woman
runs toward him, her arms waving.
"This man has just been shot! He's bleeding!" she
shouts.
Kukucka runs to the pumps and finds Walekar, blood flowing
from his chest, dying.
A little more than a mile away, in front of a post office
in
Silver Spring, a Salvadoran immigrant sits on a metal bench
and reads. Sarah Ramos was a law student in her native country;
now she is a 34-year-old housecleaner, waiting for her ride
to work.
The shot, like all the others, comes from nowhere. It passes
through her head and into the Crisp & Juicy carryout restaurant
behind her.
"She was sitting on the bench, just sitting there,"
says a
witness, Dolores Wallgren.
It is 8:37 a.m., and three people have died in the past 56
minutes.
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With horrible and abrupt clarity, the police realize they
are in the middle of a massacre.
The brass convenes at the Mobil station to plot their next
move. They would send every officer available to patrol the
area, ordering them to wear their bulletproof vests.
Park police, state police, police from surrounding areas all
are drawn into the maelstrom.
There is one clue: According to a witness to the Ramos shooting,
two men in a white "box truck" with black lettering
sped away from the scene. All across the area, police stop
and search white delivery vans.
But they cannot protect Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, 25-year-old
mother of a preschooler. She pulls her burgundy minivan up
to a Kensington Shell station's coin-operated vacuum, removes
her daughter's car seat and begins to clean her car.
At 9:58 a.m., a single bullet strikes her, knocking her to
the
ground. Mechanic John Mistry is working nearby under the hood
of a car when he hears the loud "crack." An electrical
short, he figures.
But when he looks up, the lights are still on. Mistry and
fellow mechanic Jimmy Ajca run out of the garage to
find Lewis-Rivera under her van door, blood trickling from
her mouth.
Small bubbles dribble from her lips as she struggles for breath.
Nor can police protect Pascal Charlot. The 72-year-old handyman
is gunned down while standing on Kalmia Road and Georgia Avenue
in Washington, half a block from the border with Montgomery
County.
It is 9:15 p.m. In a little more than 27 blood-soaked hours,
six people have been killed -- each apparently with a single,
.223-caliber bullet fired at long range, each for no apparent
reason.
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On Friday, Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose appeals
for an end to the murders. "We implore him to surrender,
stop this madness," he pleads.
But the shootings do not stop. Instead, they spread to other
places.
At 2:30 p.m. Friday, a 43-year-old woman from Spotsylvania,
Va., the mother of two young sons, is parked in front of the
Michaels craft store in Fredericksburg, 50 miles south of
Washington. She has made her purchases, and is loading her
champagne-colored Toyota minivan.
The bullet hits her in the lower right side of her back, exits
under her left breast and is embedded in the rear of the minivan.
Miraculously, her vital organs are spared.
"She's very lucky," says Spotsylvania County sheriff's
Major Howard Smith.
She is the first to survive this rampage. Police will not
give
her name; there are fears that her safety is still in jeopardy.
On Saturday, nothing. On Sunday, nothing.
On Monday, a 13-year-old student at Benjamin Tasker Elementary
School in Bowie, Md., changes his daily routine, and almost
pays for it with his life.
Normally, he attends a prayer service at a neighbor's house
before taking the bus to school. But on this day, he skips
the service, and his aunt drives him to school. As he walks
to the front door, he crumples to the ground, shot once in
the chest.
His aunt is a nurse. She scoops him up and drives him to the
hospital. He survives.
And this time, the gunman leaves a message. A police search
a wooded area 150 yards from the school turns up a .223-caliber
shell casing and a tarot card -- the Death card.
On it, someone had written this: "Dear policeman, I am
God."
People are unnerved by a villain who seems to be everywhere,
all powerful and invisible. Some keep their children out of
school.
Soccer and baseball leagues cancel their games, and outdoor
recesses are put on hold.
Adults find themselves looking over their shoulders as they
scurry about, nervously doing chores that once entailed no
risk.
"You think you're safe, but you're only as safe as your
next
step," says Sharon Healy, whose son Brandon attends school
at Tasker.
On Wednesday, Dean Harold Meyers stops at the Battlefield
Sunoco station, seven miles south of Manassas, Va. He is 53,
a project manager and design engineer from Gaithersburg, Md.,
who has worked for the same engineering firm for 20 years.
He finishes filling the tank. He prepares to return to his
black Mazda. There is a shot. It is 8:15 p.m., and the body
of Dean Meyers lies crumpled on the station's concrete floor.
And then, a little more than 25 hours later, another death:
a
man, gunned down at yet another Virginia gas station. A witness
across the street from the Exxon station on Route 1 in Fredericksburg
says he heard a single shot, saw a white van nearby.
It all fits the pattern. But for now, authorities say, they
cannot be certain that this was the latest victim of a self-elected
God.
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