Beltway sniper attacks

The Beltway sniper attacks took place during three weeks of October 2002 in the eastern United States. Ten people were killed and three others critically injured by spree killers in and around Washington D.C. in various locations throughout the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area and along Interstate 95 in Virginia. It was later learned that the rampage apparently began the month before with murders and robbery in other states which had resulted in 3 deaths.

Timeline

• September 5, 2002, 10:30 pm: Paul LaRuffa, a 55-year old pizzeria owner, is shot six times at close range while locking up his pizzeria in Clinton, Maryland. LaRuffa's laptop was found in Muhammad's car when Muhammad was arrested.
• September 21: Claudine Parker, a liquor store clerk in Montgomery, Alabama is shot and killed during a robbery. Her coworker, Kellie Adams, is also injured. Evidence found at the crime scene eventually ties this killing to the Beltway attacks and allows authorities to identify Muhammad and Malvo as suspects, although this connection is not made until October 8.
• October 2:
• 5:20 pm: A shot is fired through a window of a Michael's Craft Store in Aspen Hill, a census-designated place in Montgomery County, Maryland, a northern suburban county near Washington, DC in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area. No one was injured.
• 6:05 pm: The first Beltway-area sniper shooting occurs on October 2 in Wheaton, an unincorporated community in Montgomery County, Maryland. The first victim was James Martin, a 55-year old program analyst who died in the parking lot of a Shoppers Food Warehouse grocery store.
• October 3: The next wave of shootings occurs in Montgomery County in a 15-hour period.
• 7:41 am: James L. Buchanan, a 39-year old landscaper known as "Sonny," is shot dead in Montgomery County near Rockville. Buchanon was shot while mowing the grass at the Fitzgerald Auto Mall as part of his landscaping.
• 8:12 am: 54-year old part-time taxi driver Prem Kumar Walekar is killed in Aspen Hill while pumping gasoline into his taxi at an Amoco station at Aspen Hill Road and Connecticut Avenue.
• 8:37 am: Sarah Ramos, a 34-year old babysitter and housekeeper, dies while reading a book on a bench shortly after she exits a bus. Ramos was killed at the Leisure World Shopping Center in Silver Spring, another community in Montgomery County.
• 9:58 am: 25-year old Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera dies while pumping gasoline at a Shell station in Kensington, Maryland, a town located in Montgomery County.
• 9:15 pm: Pascal Charlot, a 72-year old retired carpenter, is shot while walking on Georgia Avenue in Washington, DC. He dies less than an hour later.
• October 4, 2:30 pm: 43-year old Caroline Seawell is wounded in the parking lot of a Michael's craft store at Spotsylvania Mall in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, just outside the city of Fredericksburg. She was loading purchases into her minivan when she was shot.
• October 7, 8:09 am: Iran Brown, a 13-year-old boy, is wounded as he arrives at Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, Maryland, a city in Prince George's County. (Brown's name was at first concealed from the public, but has since been revealed.)
• October 9 8:18 pm: 53-year old Dean Harold Meyers is shot dead while pumping gasoline at a station in Prince William County, Virginia, near the city of Manassas.
• October 11 9:30 am: 53-year old Kenneth Bridges dies while pumping fuel at an Exxon station off Interstate 95 in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, near Fredericksburg.
• October 14 9:15 pm: 47-year old Linda Franklin, an FBI intelligence analyst who was a resident of Arlington County, Virginia, is shot dead at about 9:15 a.m. after she finishes shopping at a Home Depot in Fairfax County, Virginia, just outside Falls Church. The police receive a supposedly very good lead after the October 14 shooting, but it is later determined that the witness was inside at the time and was lying. The witness was arrested for interfering with the investigation.
• October 19 8:00 pm: 37-year old Jeffrey Hopper is shot in a parking lot near the Ponderosa steakhouse in Ashland, Virginia, about 90 miles south of Washington near Interstate 95. Authorities discover a 3-page letter from the sniper in the woods.
• October 21: Richmond-area police arrest two men, one with a white van, outside a gas station. The men turn out to be illegal immigrants with no connection to the sniper and they are remanded to the custody of the INS.
• October 22, 5:56 am: Bus driver Conrad Johnson is shot dead while standing on the steps of his bus in Aspen Hill. Chief Moose releases part of the content of one of the sniper's communications, in which he declares, "Your children are not safe, anywhere, at any time."
• October 23: Ballistics experts confirm Johnson as the 10th fatality in the sniper attacks.
• In a yard in Tacoma, Washington, near to a sniper school operated by the United States Army, police search with metal detectors for bullets, shell casings, or other evidence which may link to the snipers. A tree stump believed to have been used for target practice is seized.
• October 24: John Allen Muhammad (born John Allen Williams) and Lee Boyd Malvo (also known as John Lee Malvo) are found sleeping in their car, a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice, at a Maryland rest stop, and arrested on federal weapons charges. Police were tipped off by a trucker who noticed the parked car and also received another call from an alert motorist. A .223-caliber weapon and tripod are found in a bag in Muhammad's car. Ballistics tests later conclusively link the seized rifle to 11 of the 14 bullets recovered from earlier attacks. Muhammad was previously a member of the United States National Guard and later the United States Army, where he earned medals for expert marksmanship under his given name of John Allen Williams.