Speaking Of Terrorism…
John Muhammad to be executed tomorrow night
This is about one father who lost his daughter.
MOUNTAIN HOME, IDAHO — The setting sun is streaming in the living room window of Marion Lewis’s house as he puts aside his cigarette and starts telling the story of the day his daughter was murdered.
He is 57, a bulky, balding man sitting in his stocking feet. He has a brown bandanna around his neck, gray hair tied in a ponytail, and his glasses and a pack of cheap Seneca cigarettes are stuffed in his shirt pocket. He shoos away his two beagles, who retreat out the dog door.
He remembers the day, Oct. 3, 2002, when Lori Lewis Rivera was shot to death by the D.C. snipers at a gas station in Kensington. Two thousand miles away, her father was oblivious, out in the wilderness running a giant rock-crushing machine. Lewis stares at the floor as he recalls it, kneading his beefy hands and wiping away tears with his fingers.
He can still hear the phone ringing and ringing back at the motel where he was staying that day, as he stood in the shower washing off the grime and wondering who could be calling.
Seven years since John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo went on a homicidal rampage across the Washington area, their work still torments the families it touched.
I hope he finds some comfort.
- Aggie