Obituaries

The D.C. sniper, John Allen Muhammad, was executed tonight. He was 48 years old, not 41, as I mistakenly wrote the other day. He was 41 when he committed the murders which terrorized the nation's capital:

Muhammad, 48, a man who directed what many law enforcement officials consider one of the worst outbreaks of crime in the nation's history, died in Virginia's death chamber while relatives of his victims looked on. Unlike his victims, however, Muhammad knew when and how he was going to die. He and Jamaican immigrant Lee Boyd Malvo, then 17, killed 10 people in the Washington area during a terrifying October 2002 rampage; they also have been linked to shootings in several other states.

State authorities escorted a denim and flip-flop clad Muhammad into a small room at the Greensville Correctional Center and strapped him to a cross-shaped table. He was injected with a series of lethal drugs until he died.

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