Beltway sniper attacks, Shooting spree in the Washington, D.C., area that killed 10 people and injured 3 over a three-week period in October 2002. The shooters, John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, chose targets seemingly at random and brought daily life in the area to a virtual standstill. The attacks began on Oct. 2, 2002, when a bullet shattered the window of a craft store in Aspen Hill, Md., narrowly missing a cashier. Less than an hour after that incident, a 55-year-old man was shot and killed while walking across a parking lot in Wheaton, Md. The shootings were not initially recognized as being connected, but law enforcement authorities soon realized that those two acts of violence were just the first of more than a dozen linked shootings over the next 23 days. Investigators determined that bullets from several of the first seven shootings were fired from the same weapon—a high-powered .223-calibre rifle. By the end of the day on Oct. 3, five more victims had been killed in the Washington metropolitan area. From Oct. 9 to Oct. 14, two men and a woman were killed in separate incidents in northern Virginia. On Oct. 19 a 13th shooting occurred, at a restaurant in Ashland, Va. Working with tips from the public as well as evidence provided by the shooters themselves, investigators tracked down Muhammad and Malvo and arrested them on Oct. 23. Police recovered a Bushmaster XM-15 assault rifle from Muhammad’s car and discovered that the vehicle’s back seat and trunk had been modified to act as a portable sniper’s nest. Muhammad was convicted on murder and weapons charges in 2003 and executed in 2009. Malvo, who was a minor at the time of the crimes, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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