Washington Sniper Creates
Havoc in West Virginia
C
Copyright Joe Vialls, 20 August 2003
While the residents of New York were stumbling around in complete darkness at 10.30 p.m. on 14 August, because of the biggest blackout in American history, their poorer relatives in West Virginia had no such problems. Lights were blazing everywhere, including at the service station where 31-year-old Jeanie Patton was pumping gas at the Speedway in Campbells Creek, which sits along Campbells Creek Drive. A solitary shot rang out in the distance, and Jeannie fell to the ground, killed instantly by a single .223 Remington bullet to the head, exactly the same as those used by the Washington sniper during 2002. The shooter escaped undetected.
One hour later at 11.30 p.m. the same day, 26-year-old Okey Meadows Jr. was standing near a pay window at the Go-Mart in Cedar Grove, Campbells Creek. A solitary shot rang out in the distance and Okey fell to the ground, killed instantly by a single .223 Remington bullet to the upper neck, exactly the same as those used by the Washington sniper during 2002. The shooter escaped undetected.
Ten days earlier, at 11.05 p.m. on 10 August, 44-year old Gary Carrier Jr. was standing at a Go-Mart pay phone on 722 Bigley Avenue in Charleston, about 15 miles away Campbells Creek. A solitary shot rang out in the distance, and Gary fell to the ground, killed instantly by a single .223 Remington bullet to the head, exactly the same as those used by the Washington sniper during 2002. The shooter escaped undetected.
At first police reluctantly admitted a “parallel” with the Washington sniper, but then went out of their way desperately trying to deflect attention away from this very obvious reality. While FBI, ATF and Secret Service agents from the 2002 Washington investigations started scouring West Virginia, police told you they were looking for an “overweight white man in a black pickup truck”, which is about as far away as you can get from the “black man in a white van” they were allegedly looking for last year in Washington and Maryland.
As I wrote last year, and based on the available hard evidence, there was not the slightest chance that John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were responsible for the spate of very professional shooting in the Washington area, and in all likelihood were set up to take the rap, until the time that the shooter or shooters wanted to start the cycle of killing and panic all over again.
That time seems to be now, and the new shootings dovetail very well with current court proceedings against John Allen Muhammad. On 6 August his defense lawyer, Jonathan Shapiro, said the unique circumstances of the case, especially extensive pretrial publicity, made it necessary to have an expert to help with jury pool questioning. Prosecutors said a jury consultant would be an “unnecessary extravagance”.
In a motion made public on 14 August, Muhammad’s defense team outlined its proposals for jury selection, asking for individual questioning of potential jurors about their views on the death penalty. In addition, the defense sought additional peremptory challenges, by which potential jurors can be dismissed without cause.
First Published 27 November 2002
"For two long weeks, a sniper paralyzed three American States to the point where children were no longer allowed to go to school, workers were too frightened to go to the office, and drivers stopped refueling their cars for fear of being hit by a bullet. Whoever the real sniper was, it was certainly not John Allen Muhammad, the man arrested for the crime. The FBI jumped too quickly in this case, accidentally arresting the suspect before realizing that Muhammad no longer owned the .223 Bushmaster rifle named in the warrant, which was then waved around by police on national television in order to incriminate him
Muhammad did indeed buy the Bushmaster cited in the warrant from Welcher’s Gun Shop in Tacoma, Washington, but sold it back to the same store on 23rd May 2000. I confirmed this fact with the owner of the store by telephone from Australia, and was freely provided with the Bushmaster serial number. Welcher’s owner also stated the Bushmaster named in the warrant had subsequently been bought by another citizen of Tacoma, who still had it safely under lock and key. So the Bushmaster being waved around in front of the American media by the FBI, was certainly not the firearm originally owned by John Allen Muhammad.
We can safely set aside the actual identity of the sniper, for it is largely irrelevant to the lesson the sniper was teaching American citizens, and any other citizens who cared to diligently analyze the situation. His targets were of no particular religion, race, creed, sex or age. Indeed, during the two-week period he shot men, women and children who were white, brown and black. Because of this apparently random [but probably planned] technique, the sniper denied government authorities any chance of a “psychological profile”, thereby ensuring his continued freedom in the community. The sniper only ever fired a single shot at each target, thereby ensuring he avoided detection by sophisticated aerial surveillance platforms.
The main thrust of the sniper’s lesson, seemed to be that of teaching governments and citizens alike that there is absolutely no point in confiscating 660,000 firearms from Australians or anyone else, when it is clearly possible for a mere handful of expert snipers to bring an entire nation to its knees. Think about it people, think about it. This man single-handedly paralyzed three American States for two weeks, and could have continued for months if he had wanted to. How many American States are there in total? The bottom line is that this single man proved America could be completely crippled at will by no more than twenty expert snipers, each causing mass panic in his or her three designated States.
Was the sniper wrong to teach Americans this lesson? Quite possibly. Was it cruel and unnatural punishment for the unfortunate targeted American citizens, who had never harmed anyone? Yes it certainly was, but nowhere near as cruel an unnatural as the proxy murder of 500,000 Iraqi women and children by Wall Street economic sanctions."
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