D.C. Sniper

The D.C. sniper attacks (also known as the Beltway sniper attacks) were a series of coordinated shootings that occurred over three weeks in October 2002 throughout the Washington metropolitan area, consisting of the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. These were preceded by a series of murders and robberies in several states starting in February 2002. Five people were killed, and five others were injured in the preliminary shootings, and ten people were killed and three others were critically wounded in the October shootings. In total, the snipers killed 16 people and wounded 8 others in a 10-month span. They shot 16 people in the D.C. metro area based on both events that took place that year. The perpetrators, John Allen Muhammad (41 years old at the time) and Lee Boyd Malvo (17), traveled in a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice sedan. In 2003, Muhammad was sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal injection in 2009. Malvo, a juvenile, received six life sentences in Maryland and three in Virginia.