The Moment

11|10|09: Virginia

Worst were the empty playgrounds, bathed in the sunshine of that Technicolor autumn. The parks and schoolyards should have been full of children, noisy with glee, burdened by nothing more troubling than skinned knees. Instead, their silence radiated fear. That was Washington in October 2002, when a person or persons unknown sowed three weeks of terror through random sniper fire. People were killed cutting grass, pumping gas, going shopping, walking to school. Death itself, with hood and scythe, could not have been more random, more remorseless, more unnerving. Or more pointless. When at last the snipers--John Allen Muhammad and his juvenile...

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