JARRATT – John Allen Muhammad was executed yesterday for masterminding and carrying out with his teenage accomplice the 2002 sniper shootings that killed 10 people and terrified the Washington DC region a year after the September 11th and deadly anthrax attacks.
Muhammad (48) was put to death by lethal injection at the Greensville Correctional Centre in Jarratt, Virginia, said Virginia department of corrections spokesman Larry Traylor.
“Death was pronounced at 9.11pm (2.11am Irish time). There were no complications. Mr Muhammad was asked if he wished to make a last statement. He did not acknowledge us or make any statement whatsoever,” Mr Traylor said. “Things went very normally,” he added.
Three journalists who witnessed the execution said a clean-shaven Muhammad was stoic as he was strapped down and as the lethal injection was administered.
Muhammad was convicted of killing Dean Harold Meyers at a gas station near Manassas, Virginia, during a three-week shooting spree in October 2002 that spanned Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
Paul Ebert, the Virginia prosecutor who won the death penalty conviction against Muhammad, was among the officials and family members of victims to witness the execution. “He died very peacefully, much more than most of his victims. I felt a sense of closure and I hope that they did too,” Mr Ebert said.
Muhammad’s teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, is serving a life sentence in prison. There has been uncertainty over how many of the victims were shot by Malvo and how many by Muhammad, though courts found they acted together in all of the slayings.
The random shootings terrified many people in and around the US capital a year after the 9/11 attacks and the mailing of deadly anthrax-laced letters to politicians and media organisations.
The pair shot innocent people going about their daily lives in petrol stations, shopping parking lots, and outside restaurants and schools. Authorities said Muhammad and Malvo cut a special hole in the back of a 1990 Chevrolet Caprice and fired rifle shots from its trunk. – (Reuters)