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A gunman with a high-powered rifle has killed nine people and injured two others in the Northern Virginia and Maryland suburbs near Washington D.C. The incidents have sown fear and paranoia throughout the population, even in Richmond.
The Sniper, as he's referred to in newspapers here, hasn't claimed a life that we know of in four days. The lack of an apparent motive, the random nature of the killings, the use of a long range weapon has made this one of the strangest series of murders in the nation's history. People going about their business, mowing the lawn, getting gas, walking to school, sitting on a park bench--killed usually with a single shot to the head.
Here in the United States we have become accustomed to the rogue with a gun. Wiping out an entire family, or an office, or even blowing up a building seems to be the way ur world works. We've come to expect this. And now, when it occurs, this peculiar tragedy is blown beyond proportion and we lose our ability to register it emotionally because of 24 hour news cycles, CNN, etc. Reality blurs into infotainment.
Our horror is registered then paved over by endless yammering about What This Means. What it means is that our culture makes people crazy, or sends almost crazy people over the edge and allows them enough access to weapons so that they may settle their personal traumas from the barrel of a gun.
Millions of innocents die daily throughout the world, many of them of malnutrition or poor sanitation, others by pogrom or disease, more by armed conflict or its aftereffects. Even in Washington D.C., several people have been killed, for little or no reason, that weren't celebritized in death because the Suburban Sniper zapped them.
I have a friend of 20 odd years, yet a gun enthusiast, who complains of the media baptizing this kook as a "sniper." A sniper, he argues, is someone in a military organization. This person is a murderer. "But murderer doesn't fit as well in a headline and doesn't sound as dramatic, does it, Harry?" So how do we live our lives knowing that this kind of person is out there, willing to shoot people for no coherent cause?
Here's my theories. First, he's a home-grown looney, who, seeing the shabby state of the world, sees the END coming and sees himself as an especially annointed instrument of God, come to hasten the inevitable.
Second, the shooter is actually a terrorist. Or, worse, perceives himself as a terrorist; that is, a freedom fighter for a righteous cause. If he is a member of El-Quaeda sleeper cell, alerted now to cause fear and loathing, the sudden silence means he's finished. For a while.
A description was let out after the last murder, of an FBI information analyst, loading her car nex t to her husband at a suburban store. It was a white panel truck with a ladder rack and a broken tail light--all of which--the police now say--was false testimony given by an ex-felon merely seeking attention. Or--are the police drawing out the murderer, getting him somehow to change his habits?
Last week, we were fearful of white box trucks, like a moving van--that apparently is an accurate description--so that even, when walking from my office to the convenience store, along Broad Street, one of Richmond's busiest, I took to alleys because I didn't want to be exposed. Is this crazy or wise? I don't know.
How do you figure a world where a murderer blows out the brains of a woman sitting on a park bench, where young men on fire for a cause fly airplanes into office towers, where governments through sleight of hand, rule and wage wars?
The terrible thing is, I am surprised this hasn't happened before, or more often. A few blocks from my house some months ago a young woman was shot in her bed by somebody who stood on the railing of a fire escape and shot through her window. Apartment mates heard the sound, saw the hole in the window, called the cops, but thought it was a rock. Later, the person living next door to the woman knocked on the door and got no answer and finally, when emergency personnel broke in, she was lying in her bed, having bled to death.
The suspect was an ex boyfriend who, as fate would have it, overdosed on heroin a few weeks ago.
Yes, millions of innocents die everywhere daily. The weight of it all is incomprehensible. The autumn wind shudders leaves outsdie my window, there is a bird gaily chriping, a child laughs. Somehow, it all just keeps going on, awful, beautiful, spinning together in this poetic maelstrom we call life.--HEK
 Evidence gathering about The Sniper
False Witness
Washington D.C. Metro Shootings Overview
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Schools Closed in Richmond - 19/10/2002, imregelson@att.net
Due to parents and teachers freaking out about the areas sniper attack. All area schools will be closed. No sense in being rational about real threats of violence. Lets all just lock our selves in our houses and face the real threat of slipping in the bathroom one of the biggest dangers to life and limb that Americans face.
Sniper hits outside Richmond - 19/10/2002, imregelson@att.net
Last night, the sniper hit a 37 year old man in Ashland, Viginia, 15 miles North of Richmond. The man was hit behind the suburban chain, Ponderosa Steak House, after eating dinner there. He\\\'s lost part of his spleen, pancreas and stomach, and will probably make it, but they haven\\\'t been able to remove the bullet yet. He\\\'s being treated at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond.
Two weeks ago I saw my sister\\\'s former principal (head of school) giving a press conference, as chief administrator of Prince William County Schools, where she was hired to clean up the corruption. She was on CNN responding to questions after the 13 year old boy was hit outside one of her schools.
It was announced today that Richmond area schools will be under a \\\"Lock Down\\\" indefinately, to safeguard the children.
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