The Terror Comes to an End
The two individuals who were arrested on October 24th were named John Allen Mohammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, who was only 17 at the time. State Trooper D. Wayne Smith was first to arrive on the scene, and immediately blocked the exit of the rest stop with his squad car. As more police arrived, they completed the barricade and began staging their operation, unbeknownst to the two suspects who were sleeping in their vehicle. They were quickly apprehended, alongside weapons later conclusively tied to many of the shootings.
VIRGINIA BEACH, VA – OCTOBER 29: Witness Christine A. Goodwin points to a diagram of a sniper shooting scene. Goodwin stopped at a gas station in Spotsylvania County where sniper victim Kenneth Bridges was shot on October 11, 2002. (Photo by Dave Ellis-Pool/Getty Images)
Initially, motives for the numerous murders were a mystery to investigators. Theories were wide-ranging, with one pre-investigation rumor that they were carried out to cover up the eventual murder of Muhammad’s ex-wife. She had estranged him from his children sometime before the shootings began, and many of the attacks took place very close to her home. Despite this, Judge LeRoy Millette Jr. did not believe enough evidence was present to go forward with this assumption.