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DC area relives terror as sniper's execution nea
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10 Nov 2009, 01:02
Mama2One
Post Count: 90
DC area relives terror as sniper's execution nears

WHEATON, Md. – When James D. Martin was shot dead seven years ago in the parking lot of a grocery store in suburban Washington, it got little attention on the nightly news.

Early the next morning, a landscaper was fatally shot in nearby Rockville, also by a .223-caliber bullet. Then a cabbie, at a gas station not far away. There was another shooting a half-hour later just up the road — a woman slain as she sat reading on a sidewalk bench. Within 90 minutes, another woman was gunned down while vacuuming her van at a service station.

By 10 a.m., it was clear that something sinister was happening. Something awful.

Then it spread.

A shooting that night in Washington moved the sniper killings south. The next day, a woman was wounded in a craft store parking lot in Fredericksburg, Va., 50 miles from D.C.

Fear reigned. People stayed indoors, afraid to go shopping or pump gas. Authorities on television recommended ways to avoid becoming targets. Schoolchildren were kept inside at recess and drilled on duck-and-cover techniques.

Then came a lull — three days without a shooting. But on Oct. 7, 13-year-old Iran Brown was shot in the chest as he was dropped off at school in Bowie, Md., just east of Washington.

"Shooting a kid — it's getting to be really, really personal now," a tearful Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose told a news conference as the nation's collective concerns settled on its capital.

There were three more fatal sniper shootings in Virginia the next week, followed by another break — three days. Four. Five. Just long enough for people to relax, at least a little.

"We were thinking everything was going to be OK," said retired school teacher Bernice Easter, of Wheaton.

It wasn't. On Oct. 19, a man was shot outside a steakhouse in Ashland, Va., about 80 miles south of Washington. Three more days passed quietly. Then bus driver Conrad Johnson was killed in Aspen Hill, Md., not far from where the shootings began.

On Oct. 24, police captured John Allen Muhammad and teenage accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo at a rest stop 50 miles northwest of D.C. The nerve-tingling terror that had gripped the region's 5.4 million people and captivated the nation was over.

Now Virginia is preparing to lethally inject Muhammad at 9 p.m. Tuesday for murdering Dean Harold Meyers at a gas station in Manassas, Va. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined without comment to consider the appeal and stop the execution.

Muhammad's lawyers also have asked Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to commute his sentence to life in prison, saying Muhammad is mentally ill and should not be executed, but Kaine typically does not respond until the court has ruled.

As the execution nears, echoes of those three weeks on edge are reverberating throughout the region.

"I don't think anybody felt safe," said Easter, now 82. "I was afraid to go out in my yard."

Paula Jean Hallberg, 54, of Silver Spring, Md., felt a shiver every time she walked across the her YMCA's wide-open parking lot.

"I would move about a lot," she said.

Ginger Pinchot, 67, a learning specialist from Kemp Mill, Md., would start the gas pump and then sit inside her car.

"It was just that random feeling," she said. "It feels like a roulette wheel when you don't know where it's going to hit next."

Steve Murchake, 59, a tax accountant from Silver Spring, remembered helicopters roaring overhead seemingly every morning as he started his commute to Herndon, Va., 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, parked his white van and took his car to work to avoid being stopped by police. Like everyone else, he imagined cross hairs trained on him whenever he stopped for gas.

"Keep moving around, don't be a target — that's what I heard on the news," Romero said.

Christian Torrenegra said he and his friends at Newport Mill Middle School in Kensington, Md., quit walking to a nearby mall after school and took the bus straight home instead. Safe on board, they made a game of pretending to spot the sniper.

"It was like, 'Oh, I see the van!'" said Torrenegra, now 19 and a student at Montgomery College. "We didn't want to take it seriously because we were so young, but at the same time we were scared."

Rachel Pinchot, Ginger's daughter-in-law, said she hasn't been able to bring herself to go back to the Aspen Hill grocery store where James Martin was killed.

Such lasting effects aren't surprising, said N. Kyle Smith, associate professor of psychology at Ohio Wesleyan University. Negative news tend to influence one's behavior more strongly than positive information, he said, and the contagion of group anxiety can intensify one's emotional response.

"Even though the fear is gone, the effect on their behavior can still linger," Smith said.

Montgomery County's Mental Health Association received hundreds of calls from apparent first-timers during the sniper period, executive director Sharon E. Friedman said. Many were parents seeking advice on dealing with both their children's fears and their own.

"We advised people to try to stick to their routine as much as possible," even if it meant exercising at home instead of the gym, she said. "The routine is a comforting thing."

At Brookside Gardens, a botanical park in Wheaton, a granite monument to the region's 10 slain sniper victims invites quiet reflection on a time that was anything but tranquil. Spokeswoman Leslie McDermott said she hopes Muhammad's execution will bring calm at last.

"I think everybody was victimized," McDermott said. "I think everybody lost a sense of freedom and innocence during that time. They were scared

< a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_sniper_grip_of_fear">link
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10 Nov 2009, 02:57
Lauren.
Post Count: 885
I remember when this happened. Seven years ago.. I was roughly 13/14 and I remember being in middle school and we were all terrified to go outside for fear it would happen to us. Going to school in North Georgia it obviously wasn't a well founded fear, but we were kids.. and I still remember being terrified. Like the story said, everyone lost a sense of freedom. To hear or see on the news that someone is randomly murdering people, by sniper shootings.. it wasn't someone breaking into your house that you're comfortable in at night, it's someone driving by your kid getting off of the school bus, or you waiting at a bus stop, or putting groceries in your car. It's horrible what he did and I don't feel bad for the punishment that he's getting.
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10 Nov 2009, 03:22
*Pixie*
Post Count: 3
I remember when this happened. I live in Maryland, so I was especially scared. We'd always look out for white vans when we went to the gas station, when we were at the skatepark.. anywhere. It was very scary. I will never forget it.
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11 Nov 2009, 04:43
Jessica [Private]
Post Count: 1751
I agree, he totally deserves it.
Although I don't remember any of this happening =/
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10 Nov 2009, 04:25
+& HelloKatie
Post Count: 17
I remember this well - a very scary time to live in Virginia.
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10 Nov 2009, 13:26
oh!Boys
Post Count: 26
I remember when all this was happening. I live in VA and thats not too far away. I was in 9th grade I think. I had this weirdo World History Teacher-he ended up having to go to DC to visit some family and took pictures of himself at random places (gas stations, restaurant parking lots) wearing a shirt with a big target on it.
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10 Nov 2009, 17:57
b★bbi
Post Count: 7
I lived in Manassas at that time... Just starting my senior year of high school. I remember how terrified we all were, especially when Mr. Myers was murdered.

I feel so badly for all of the victims.
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10 Nov 2009, 19:04
[accepting.change]
Post Count: 74
Yeah. I lived in Virginia at the time of those also. I actually was very close to the area of a few of the shootings. I couldn't believe it. Everyone who lived close by was so terrified. My heart goes out to the families of the victims because if living with this tragedy each day wasn't bad enough; they know how to relive the nightmare all over again. I am the type of person who believes in the whole an eye for an eye. And I believe he deserves to be executed. Mainly because he doesn't care two shits about the sadness he has caused nor has he showed any remorse. So keeping him in prison until he dies isn't doing any good. It's not like he will think about what he did every single minute of his life and feel bad for his crimes. This is just my opinion, though.
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10 Nov 2009, 19:05
[accepting.change]
Post Count: 74
They know have to relive the nightmare all over again.*
[Sorry about the typo.]
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10 Nov 2009, 19:05
[accepting.change]
Post Count: 74
They now have to relive the nightmare all over again.*
[Sorry about the typo.]
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10 Nov 2009, 23:46
chrissyblink
Post Count: 1
i live in maryland in montgomery county more specifically the sniper shootings did like a circle around where i live... i knew the bus driver, my mom knew the 13 year old and a relative of the cab driver... so needless to say justice will be served at 9pm tonight!
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11 Nov 2009, 00:06
[accepting.change]
Post Count: 74
Sorry to hear that. But, he will pay for it now :)
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11 Nov 2009, 06:02
Doc
Post Count: 507
For real? I was in Mt. Airy for a while... and married a girl from Damascus. Small world eh?

Oh man.. what I wouldn't give for a trip to Jimmy Cone about now!
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11 Nov 2009, 06:00
Doc
Post Count: 507
sucker is dead now though!!! shame he went peacefully with a needle in teh arm. should just turn him loose to some of the victim's families in a small room with the cops looking the other way.
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13 Nov 2009, 07:33
.xoxo
Post Count: 263
I remember this happening, it was a huge story here because the guy was from Tacoma, WA which is where I am from. His old house was like 10 minutes from the house I grew up in.
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