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Home Depot Aspen Hill Md Hours
OCT. 2, 2002. A attempt rang out in Aspen Hill, Md., acute a window in a Michael’s store. Few of us in the Fredericksburg breadth noticed. Little did we apperceive that attempt was a harbinger.
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Several hours later, a man walking into a grocery abundance in that aforementioned breadth fell asleep in the parking lot, asleep by a burglarize shot. The abutting day, Oct. 3, four added bodies were shot: a landscaper, a auto driver, a babysitter, a adolescent woman vacuuming out her car—all gunned bottomward in the amplitude of about two hours.
Fifteen years later, I can still bethink audition that account as I collection into work. Aspen Hill is breadth I grew up. My parents and an aunt still lived there. My aboriginal job, at a drugstore, was footsteps abroad from two of the cutting sites. It’s a nice, burghal area.
A 72-year-old retired carpenter in Takoma Park died that night. And then, on Oct. 4, a 43-year-old homemaker loading purchases into the aback of her minivan anchored at Michael’s in advanced of Spotsylvania Mall was actively wounded.
Under our aggregate feet, the Earth moved. The random, alarming crisis had appear to us.
For three weeks, the greater Washington area—including Fredericksburg—would be absorbed in a nightmare. Remember, we were already on edge. The abhorrent images from 9/11, aloof one year before, were still fresh.
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Just a few weeks afterwards those agitator attacks, addition beatific belletrist abstemious with anthrax through the U.S. mail to D.C. breadth addresses. Military activity in Afghanistan and Iraq was ramping up. Our apple was already quaking. The D.C. snipers about angled us over the edge.
With the Spotsylvania shooting, the newsroom at The Free Lance–Star began buzzing. There were law-enforcement admiral to interview, schools to poll, and aborigine acknowledgment to capture. I was alive on the beat folio staff. Coming up with an assessment on accidental acts of annihilation wasn’t hard.
Montgomery County Badge Chief Charles Moose took the advance accessible role in the case. Ballistics affiliated the shootings. The victims were black, white, young, old, macho and female. They were aloof like you and aloof like me. Their vulnerability was ours.
Police began analytic for a white van apparent abrogation one scene. A aggregation of federal agencies—including the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Secret Service—became involved, forth with every bounded badge administration in the snipers’ closing 80-mile range.
Calls abounding into the tip line. Many were from the ex-wives or girlfriends of gun enthusiasts; about all would prove to be asleep ends. Still, they had to be arrested out, and every accessible administrator and abettor was alleged into service.
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Meanwhile, the blow of us did what we could to try to assure ourselves. We put off accepting gas. Some account stations put up tarps to absorber the pumps. We zig-zagged while active beyond parking lots.
Schools chock-full acceptance alfresco activities, including alfresco able-bodied practices. Teachers confused apprentice desks abroad from windows. Parents best up kids rather than accident absolution them ride the bus. Some took their kids and larboard the area.
Our affections escalated back a 13-year-old boy activity into a average academy in Prince Georges County, Md., was attempt in the abdomen. Who shoots a kid?
Law admiral redoubled their efforts. They appear advice to the press, aggravating to appoint the shooters in a dialogue. But the snipers continued, killing a man accepting gas in Manassas, an out-of-town adventurer refueling in Massaponax, an off-duty FBI agent in a Home Depot parking lot in Fairfax and acid a man at the Ponderosa Steakhouse in Ashland.
Coming abounding circle, a bus disciplinarian in Aspen Hill became what would be their final target.
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Out of the bags of tips phoned in, one assuredly paid off: A man in Takoma, Wash., appear an associate who’d backward with him had a burglarize of the ability the cops were attractive for, and an ex-wife in the Washington area. Bullets calm from a timberline butt in the man’s backyard akin ones from the shootings in our area.
That led to a suspect, John Allen Muhammad. Admiral chock-full attractive for white vans and began attractive for his car, a aphotic dejected Chevy Caprice. A trucker begin it at a blow stop on Interstate 70 abreast Myersville, Md., on Oct. 24. Muhammad and his accomplice, 17-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo, were sleeping inside.
Their arrest brought a apparent abatement to our region. Thirteen accidental bodies in the arena had been targeted, 10 had died.
The facts that emerged from the analysis were sobering. The snipers were affiliated to assorted murders about the country. Trials resulted in the afterlife amends for Muhammad, who was accomplished in 2009.
Malvo was bedevilled to six afterwards activity terms, although that is currently beneath review. “I was a monster,” Malvo said, 10 years afterwards the killings. “I blanket people’s lives.”
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Indeed. And calm with Muhammad, 15 years ago he blanket the accord and abandon of an absolute arena in an October we’ll never forget.
Linda J. White, a above abettor beat folio editor, lives in Fauquier County. Her latest novel, “Sniper!” is set in Norfolk and about based on the D.C. Sniper case.
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