Deviant DC sniper mastermind executed by lethal injection

JARRATT – John Allen Muhammad stepped foot into Virginia’s death chamber and within seconds was lying on a gurney, tapping his left foot, his arms spread wide with a needle dug into each.

‘Mr Muhammad, do you have any last words?’ the warden asked the mastermind behind the DC-area sniper attacks that killed 10 in 2002. Muhammad, calm and stoic, was defiant to the end, refusing to utter any final words.The 48-year-old died by injection at 21h11 Tuesday as relatives of the victims watched, reliving the killing spree that terrorised the Washington, DC, area for three weeks that October. Victims’ families sat behind glass, separated from the rest of the 27 witnesses, who were quiet, looking straight forward, intent on what was happening.’He died very peacefully, much more than most of his victims,’ said Prince William County prosecutor Paul Ebert, who witnessed the execution at Greensville Correctional Center, south of Richmond.Muhammad was executed for killing Dean Harold Meyers, who was shot in the head at a Manassas gas station during the spree across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC.Meyers’ brother, Bob Meyers, said watching the execution was sobering and ‘surreal.’ He said other witnesses expressed a range of feelings, including some who were overcome with emotion.After the first of the three-drug lethal cocktail was administered, Muhammad blinked repeatedly and took about seven deep breaths. Within a minute, he was motionless.J. Wyndal Gordon, one of Muhammad’s attorneys, described his client in his final hours as fearless and still insisting he was innocent.The terror ended on October 24, 2002, when police captured Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo while they slept at a Maryland rest stop in a car they had outfitted for a shooter to perch in its trunk without being detected.Malvo, who was 17 when carrying out the attacks, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing Linda Franklin, a 47-year-old FBI analyst who was shot as she and her husband loaded supplies at a Home Depot in Falls Church, Virginia.- Nampa-AP