Five Years Ago Today....

[Flying Headbutt]

The first victim of the DC Area Snipers was shot and killed. Hard to believe it was that long ago. What a sick, sick **** that John Allen Muhammed is. Many of the incidents that occurred were extremely close to me, and remain so today. The effect he had on the region was ****ing incredible.

 

[outofplace]

I had forgotten about the timing. Thanks for the reminder. I spent a great deal of time in that area myself, so I remember it was a shock to my system when it happened. Reminds us how all it takes is one sick jackass too commit a random act of violence and end it all for any of us.

 

[Joe Williams]

Remember thinking immediately, when that one sheriff kept handling the press briefings, that this was a role Charles S. Dutton was born to play. And sure enough, he did!

Also, and I say this in all seriousness: How did we all avoid the race card being played in some ridiculous fashion during and after those shootings?

 

[Flying Headbutt]

How would the race card have been dropped? At the time it was thought that a white guy in a big box truck was doing this. Of course, if you look around there are about 14 white box trucks for every sedan you see on local roads. It only added to the hysteria.

 

[wickedwritah]

Because we are somewhat mature, J-Will. I lived two hours from D.C. at the time, and allegedly our neck of the woods was next as he progressed northward from D.C. to Baltimore to Harrisburg.

 

[wickedwritah]

How would the race card have been dropped? At the time it was thought that a white guy in a big box truck was doing this. Of course, if you look around there are about 14 white box trucks for every sedan you see on local roads. It only added to the hysteria.

Of course, the "witness" lying about the white box truck made things a bit more difficult.

 

[expendable]

I had forgotten about this being in early October. True story. I covered a team that was forced to postpone a game with the same opponent for three straight years due to incidents. FIrst, in 2001 it was September 11. Then (after a change in the schedule moved the game to Ottober), the DC Sniper, and finally in 2003 the game was postponed by a hurricane (I forget which one). All three times, the game had to be played at the end of the season.

 

[KYSportsWriter]

I had forgotten when this happened. I had some friends living in the D.C. area at the time and didn't know if they were OK until a few days later.

 

[Hustle]

Man, I can't believe it's been five years.

I remember talking to our desk guy on the first day and even he joked, "Watch out for the box truck, dude." If only we knew...

As time went on, I frequented only one gas station not far from where I lived. The mini-mart was in the middle, and parking on one side meant you were essentially covered on three sides and exposed only a little bit on the fourth.

We saw one public HS football game played at MCB Quantico. It was weird being outside and not being afraid.

I won't ever forget when they hit in our county. That Sunoco station wasn't but a mile from where I lived when I first moved here. I shop at the Home Depot in Fairfax from time to time, too, and I can't help but think of the victims when I'm there.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

I had completely forgotten about this.
So much has happened in the meantime.
At least they caught these murderous loons. I don't know how I'd feel if I'd known one of the anthrax victims, an event which had also slipped my mind until this thread popped.

 

[Flying Headbutt]

Hustle, the Home Depot shooting happened at 7 Corners in Falls Church. It was about a mile or so from where I lived, and where my roommate went every day because he was a carpenter.

 

[Hustle]

Yeah, I meant Fairfax County. But yeah, it ain't far from where we are now... not a mile, but not too many miles.

 

[forever_town]

I can still remember certain moments of that time like they happened yesterday.

There was that scary day when five shootings happened; one of them was outside Leisure World. The company I worked for at the time bought lunch for everyone so that we wouldn't walk outside to get lunch. Needless to say, I wasn't working in this business... but I digress. When I found out one of the shootings was outside Leisure World, I called my grandmother since she lived there.

There was the time when one of the shootings happened at a KFC near one of the bus lines I took back then. I actually flagged down a cab rather than wait outside for a bus that would take me home. When I told my father I did that, he said, "I don't blame you."

Then there was the time when I literally saw a woman *run* to her car from the curb at a Shoppers Food Warehouse. I was standing behind an awning.

The day it was reported that they thought they had the suspects, I wrote a set of lyrics to a song called "Desperation." I just had to get those feelings off my chest...

 

[Dyno]

I barely went outside for 3 weeks. I went to a grocery store with underground parking and like Hustle, I found a mostly protected gas station. I spent a lot of time at the mall when I was going stir crazy. At work, we ate at the restaurant in our building almost every day b/c we were all afraid to go out.

Friends of mine were vacationing down near Charlottesville about 2 weeks into it and I gladly went to spend a couple of days with them. I was still super-cautious and nervous, though and I remember feeling really freaked out when I had to get gas at a big, exposed gas station.

 

[expendable]

My grandparents were living in Alexandria at the time, and in this business you go visit when you can. MrsExpendable insisted that we gas up well off the beaten path. I spent numerous weeks in Alexandria as a child, and I couldn't tell you of anything that's well off the beaten path there, especially a gas station.

It was a scary time. My dad says he believes he passed their car on the night they hit the Ponderosa in Ashland. After they were caught, he told me that he remembered passing a blue beat up old-style Chevrolet Caprice on I-95 around the Kings Dominion area, that looked like what was being shown on televsion (everyone was looking for a whte van for the longest time). He also remembers thinking to himself that you drive what you can drive -- and wondering if they could make it to their destination before the car fell apart. Unfortunately if it was them, they did.

 

[TwoGloves]

Those two guys were profiled recently on some TV show. I think it was "Notorious" on A&E. I thought they might rerun it today but it's not on the schedule. Pretty good stuff when I saw it though.