October 24, 2002: The Beltway Snipers Are Arrested

John Allen Muhammad (left) and Lee Malvo

October 24, 2002: The "Beltway Snipers," who killed 7 people in the Washington, D.C. area, are arrested.

John Allen Muhammad was 41 years old, and a native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He joined the Nation of Islam, dropping his birth name of John Allen Williams. In 1999, he kidnapped his children and took them to the Caribbean island nation of Antigua, apparently engaging in credit card and immigration document fraud.

It was during this time that he became close with Lee Boyd Malvo, who was living on Antigua with his mother. Then 17 and a native of Jamaica, he fell into a Svengali relationship with Muhammad, being converted to Islam and moved to Bellingham, Washington. There, he shoplifted a Bushmaster XM-15, an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle.

At first, Muhammad was making Malvo shoot people connected with his ex-wife, Mildred Williams. On February 16, 2002, 21-year-old Keenya Nicole Cook was shot and killed by Malvo at the front door of her aunt's home in Tacoma, Washington. The aunt, Isa Nichols, had been good friends with John Allen Muhammad's ex-wife Mildred and had encouraged her to seek a divorce. This was the 1st of 9 shootings that the FBI later classified as "preliminary attacks": 3 in Maryland, 2 in Louisiana, and 1 each in Washington State, Arizona, Atlanta and Alabama.

Then came the series of shootings that became known as the Beltway Sniper attacks. A hole was cut at the rear of a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice driven by Muhammad and Malvo, as a firing port to be used during their attacks. This allowed them to remain hidden and escape the scene following their attacks.

On October 2, a shot was fired in Aspen Hill, Maryland, but it didn't hit anybody, and it was originally presumed to be random, before it was later compared to the other shootings. Just an hour later, in a supermarket parking lot in Wheaton, Maryland, James Martin was shot and killed.

The next morning, all within a span of 2 hours and 17 minutes, 4 people were killed in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, all in open areas where they were easy targets: A man at a car dealership in Rockville; a man at a gas station in Aspen Hill; a woman at in a shopping center parking lot in Norbeck; and a woman at a gas station in Kensington. That night, a man was killed outside a Target in the Shepherd Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

The next day, October 4, the pair of killers crossed the Potomac River into Virginia, and shot a woman in a mall parking lot in Spotsylvania. She survived. There were no shootings for 2 days, but on October 7, a 13-year-old boy was shot outside his school in Bowie, Maryland. He survived. On October 9, a man was shot and killed at a gas station in Manassas, Virginia. On October 11, a man was shot and killed at a gas station in Spotsylvania.

Charles Moose, Chief of the Montgomery County Department of Police, headed the investigation. Since more than one State was involved, he worked closely with the FBI even before one of their employees became a victim. On October 14, with the killers probably not realizing they were now messing with the wrong people, they shot a woman who was an FBI intelligence analyst in a shopping center parking lot in Falls Church, Virginia.

Just as a belief that the serial killer known as the Son of Sam was killing women with long blonde hair in New York in 1977, and women started tying their hair up or dying it, gas stations responded to these shootings by putting tarps up to conceal their customers, and some people crouched over while pumping their own gas.

It would take 5 more days before the shootings resumed. On October 19, a man was killed in a restaurant parking lot in Ashland, Virginia. At 90 miles, this was the furthest yet from downtown Washington. On October 22, a man was shot on his house steps in Aspen Hill.

Just after midnight on October 24, 2002, refrigerator mechanic Whitney Donahue called 911 at a rest stop off Interstate 70 near Myersville, Maryland. He said he saw a dark blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice with New Jersey license plates, which matched the description that law enforcement had said they were looking for. At 3:19 AM, Muhammad and Malvo were found sleeping in their car, and were arrested on federal weapons charges.

The stolen Bushmaster rifle was found, and ballistics tests later conclusively linked it to 11 of the 14 shootings, including one in which no one was hurt. The Caprice was later discovered to have formerly been used as an undercover police car in Bordentown, New Jersey.

In total, Muhammad and Malvo were responsible for 27 people being shot, 17 of them fatally. There were 12 attacks in Maryland, 5 in Virginia, 2 in Louisiana, and 1 each in the District of Columbia, Washington State, Arizona, Georgia and Alabama.

In 2003, both defendants were convicted. Muhammad was sentenced to death, and was executed by lethal injection at Greensville Correctional Center in Virginia on November 10, 2009. As Malvo was legally a juvenile at the time of the shootings, he received 6 life sentences in Maryland and 3 in Virginia.

Charles Moose died in 2021. As of October 24, 2022, Mildred Muhammad, John Allen's ex-wife, is a motivational speaker and counselor, counseling people affected by crime, including the victims and the families of the perpetrators. Lee Malvo is serving multiple life sentences at Keen Mountain Correctional Center in Virginia. He is unlikely ever to be released alive. 

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October 24, 2002 was a Thursday. This was also the day that Gary Lineker, former star soccer player for Leciester City Football Club, led a consortium to buy the team and save it from bankruptcy. the I have a separate entry for that event.

Game 5 of the World Series was played. The San Francisco Giants beat the team then known as the Anaheim Angels, 16-4. Jeff Kent hit 2 home runs. The most well-known moment in this game occurred in the bottom of the 7th inning, when Giants 1st baseman J.T. Snow scored off a Kenny Lofton triple. Three-year-old batboy Darren Baker, son of Giants manager Dusty Baker, ran to home plate to collect Lofton's bat before the play was completed, and was quickly lifted by the jacket by Snow with one hand as he crossed the plate, with David Bell close on his heels. Had Snow not acted quickly, Darren could have been seriously injured in a play at home plate.

The Giants were now 1 win away from winning the World Series for the 1st time in 1954, when they were still in New York. They would have to wait. Darren Baker was later drafted by the Washington Nationals as a 2nd baseman.

(UPDATE: In 2024, he played 9 games for the Nationals. These were his only major league games through the 2025 season.)

The NFL was in midweek. Two games were played in college football. Number 12 North Carolina State beat Clemson, 38-6 at Memorial Stadium in Clemson, South Carolina. And Colorado State beat Brigham Young University, 37-10 at Hughes Stadium in Fort Collins, Colorado.

The NBA season started 5 days later. There were 9 games in the NHL:

* The New York Islanders beat the Florida Panthers, 5-3 at the Nassau Coliseum.

* The Boston Bruins and the Ottawa Senators played to a tie, 2-2 at the FleetCenter (now the TD Garden) in Boston.

* The Philadelphia Flyers beat the Montreal Canadiens, 6-2 at the First Union Center (now the Xfinity Mobile Arena) in Philadelphia.

* The San Jose Sharks beat the Nashville Predators, 2-1 at the Gaylord Entertainment Center (now the Bridgestone Arena) in Nashville.

* The Minnesota Wild beat the Chicago Blackhawks, 3-2 at the United Center in Chicago.

* The Colorado Avalanche beat the Phoenix Coyotes, 3-2 at the American West Arena (now the Mortgage Matchup Center) in Phoenix.

* The Dallas Stars and the Calgary Flames played to a tie, 3-3 at the Saddledome in Calgary.

* The St. Louis Blues beat the Edmonton Oilers, 2-1 at the Skyreach Center (as the Northlands Coliseum was then known) in Edmonton.

* And the Vancouver Canucks and the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim played to a tie, 2-2 at General Motors Place (now the Rogers Arena) in Vancouver.)