Fear Strikes the Beltway

     It was October 24, 2002 and the latest news about the beltway sniper spread through my school like wildfire.  Finally, my second grade teacher asked everyone to stop what they were doing and go their seats.  She then announced that the beltway sniper had been caught by the police and things at school could go back to normal now.   When I got home from school there was nothing but stories about the snipers on the television.  It seems that there were two men and they used a blue, 1990 Chevy Caprice as their rolling nest for randomly killing people in Maryland and Virginia.   For 23 days, these two men had terrorized the Washington DC suburbs.  They had killed ten innocent, everyday people and critically injured three others. 

     At first, I was not sure if they really caught the right criminals.  However, as I listened to the news, I learned that the police had found them sleeping in their car.  The car had a hole cut in the trunk near the license plates so that shots could be fired from the car without anyone noticing. There was other evidence in the car that convinced the police they were the right ones.  Police records showed they had performed robberies and murder in Alabama and Louisiana before heading to the DC area.  Once the police found them, they were immediately arrested and put in jail.  As it turned out both of the suspects were convicted at a trial and were sentenced to life without parole.  One man was a minor, so he was not given the death penalty.  The older of the two was given the death penalty in Virginia and he was eventually executed by lethal injection.

     I remember the beltway sniper because it was the first time I was really scared and worried about someone in my family getting killed.  The year before this happened there was the terrorist attack at the Pentagon.  I recall seeing all the parents in front of the school trying to pick their kids up early.  My mom was there early.  She took me home and said my dad would be late.  We watched the news all night and saw the Pentagon on fire.  The events of 9/11 were talked about at school but everyone was calm and I was not scared at all.

     The beltway sniper was different.  When it first started, there was a special assembly at school and the principal explained that we were going to take safety precautions until the police could find out what was going on.   All after school activities were cancelled.  There was no more recess outside and the play ground was shut down.  The school doors and windows were locked tight.  Visitors were restricted to parents only, which meant no special speakers or parties.  The cafeteria blinds were closed.  We were told not to sit or play near the windows.  The lines for loading buses were inside of the school instead of outside.  We also had a few emergency drills. 

     The changes at school affected the students and the teachers.   Each time another person was killed, I could hear the teachers whispering about the sniper and shaking their heads.  Although this bothered me, I didn’t really get scared until the snipers shot a woman at the Home Depot.  My dad and I would usually go to the Home Depot once a week to pick up supplies for projects.   We had been at the same Home Depot the day before the shooting.  It was a totally random shooting and nobody saw anything.  It could have been us.  Dad was very sad and said we were not going anywhere unless we really needed something.  We went to the grocery store for food but that was about it.  He said that we were very lucky.

     When the snipers were finally caught, everything at school returned to normal.  At home things went back to normal too.  However, for a while my dad and I shopped at Lowe’s instead of the Home Depot.  What I learned from this experience is that daily life can change very quickly, with no warning at all.  As I have gotten older, I would add that this experience taught me how to react during a major crisis situation.