ROCKVILLE - On a sunny, fall Thursday seven years ago, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, the "Beltway Snipers," shot and killed five people in Maryland and Washington. For many of the witnesses to Muhammad's crimes that day, his execution Tuesday would represent justice served.
But the countdown to Muhammad's death has also forced those who witnessed his carnage to remember the horror and the fear of that day in October.
"It never ends," said Gary Huss, who watched James L. Buchanan Jr. bleed to death after he was struck by one of Muhammad's bullets.
"I forget about it for a while, and then people like you come along," he said. "After he dies, hopefully I'm done with this, no more reporters."
Barring the Supreme Court overturning his sentence, or Virginia's governor commuting it, Muhammad, 48, is set to die by lethal injection on Tuesday at Virginia's Greensville Correctional Center. Muhammad and Malvo's 22-day shooting spree left 10 people dead and three injured.
Shortly after 7:30 a.m. on Oct. 3, 2002, James "Sonny" Buchanan pulled up to the back lot of Fitzgerald Auto Mall in Rockville. Buchanan had recently retired from landscaping but as a favor to Jack Fitzgerald he continued to mow the car dealership's grass.
"He was always just nice, and looking out for the property," said Huss, who runs the dealership's repair shop. "Just a nice guy ... honestly concerned just about general people and the environment at the dealership. A gentle guy."
Huss remembers driving up to the dealership that day and seeing Buchanan on the mower. As he often did, Huss got out of the car and made small talk with Buchanan. Moments after Huss pulled away he heard a loud bang, but dismissed it as a car backfiring on the busy Rockville Pike nearby.
"I just didn't think anything of (the noise from the shot)," he said. "To randomly do that to people, families? This is Rockville, not Iraq."
When Huss was told that someone was bleeding in the back lot, he still didn't put two and two together. It wasn't until the body was turned over that he realized it was Buchanan.
