I remember all of that like it was yesterday. I had to call Chief Moose's team (montgomery county MD) to get updates and have my guys out on the road keep lookout for the "white van" and anything suspicious.
The one Muhommad was actually executed for was the Exxon shooting he did in Massaponax, near Fredericksburg, Va (or was it the Manassas killing? i don't remember). The reports were that they were shooting from the Holiday Inn across the street. I stayed at that hotel several times due to a training academy in Fredericksburg we went to often and we used that Exxon because our fleet credit cards for gas were Exxon/Mobil credit cards.
Then, when the two came to Hanover County, the county i grew up in, and next to my current county, they shot the guy at the Ponderosa steak house in Ashland, where i went to High School. My brother was in Ashland that same night and I called a buddy of mine at the Hanover Sheriff's Office so he could listen to his police radio and give me updates while we watched it on CNN. --it's funny the reports that were getting to CNN were so way off the mark versus my buddies sheriff radio in live action--that was pretty cool. The description CNN said was a white male in his 30's and my mom called me because they knew my bro went there that night. Then my buddy told me the guy was near 50 years old and from out of state, way before CNN said that.Then he was paged to go into work at a road block. That is where a Hanover Deputy actually spoke to Mohammed in his blue caprice but didn't know it. They found the tarot cards in the woods behind the steak house near a dirt road behind the place. Needless to say, it wasn't my brother---some guy from PA i believe who just hopped of I-95 to eat dinner.
Then, it was a report the van was up here at the major intersection in Henrico County a half mile from my office at the Exxon at Parham rd and Broad St using a pay phone. We watched as the FBI took the little van and hauled it past my office and stripped that van clean of upholsetery and everything searching it. They took the pay phone down to run it for prints--it was all over the evening news and CNN that night. Those poor hispanics...it wasn't them. Muhammed had been traced to that same phone when he called Chief Moose about 10 minutes sooner, but, Chief Moose's team messed it all up and the feds got there too late.
We actually went into D.C. during this ordeal, my wife and inlaws, to go to the National Book Festival at the mall in Washington, near the smithsonian. Going up i-95 i kept telling them each time we saw a white van, "that's them". I had them so jumpy and I was laughing the whole time. You then realize how many white vans there are on the road. Chances are, where ever a crime takes place, there will be a white van near by.
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