The Chief Moose Fan Club seems to be winding down these days...
Posted on 03/28/2003 5:58:40 AM PST by wgeorge2001
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- D.C. SNIPER TERROR Police told suspects black from very 1st shot fired Eyewitness to Michaels store window shooting also described getaway car
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: March 28, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Paul Sperry © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
ASPEN HILL, Md. – Just hours after the Beltway snipers shot out a crafts store window here, kicking off a three-week rampage, a pizza delivery man on shift next to the store told local police he saw two short-haired black males leave the scene – laughing and "high-fiving" each other – in a dark, older-model car, WorldNetDaily has learned.
Yet the sniper task force, led by Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose, ignored the early eyewitness account and focused instead on a white suspect in a white vehicle, according to MCPD investigators, who are now speaking out about what they call racially correct "tunnel vision" during the nation's largest manhunt.
Chief Charles Moose
The snipers shot out a window at a Michaels craft store here in Aspen Hill at 5:20 p.m. on Oct. 2. About 45 minutes later, they shot and killed a 55-year-old man in a grocery store parking lot in nearby Wheaton, Md. He was the first of the snipers' 13 victims.
Suspecting the Michaels shooting was connected, one of Moose's homicide detectives canvassed the shopping center there, a senior investigator says. He took a statement from a Papa John's Pizza employee working two doors down from Michaels, who said he heard the rifle report and turned to see "two black males with short hair" driving slowly away in a dark-colored "beat-up vehicle," the source said.
The witness told the detective the men were "laughing and high-fiving themselves" as they left the parking lot, according to the investigator, who requested anonymity. The car then sped up as it exited the parking lot, as if "fleeing the scene," as the witness reportedly put it.
The detective filed a written report with headquarters, but the eyewitness statement was buried, department sources say.
The manager of the Papa John's store in Aspen Hill yesterday confirmed that one of his drivers, Steve Cribbin, witnessed the snipers leave the parking lot the evening of Oct. 2.
"He said he heard the shot and he saw a car kind of speeding out of the parking lot," manager James Colston told WorldNetDaily.
John Allen Muhammad, 42, and Lee Boyd Malvo, 18, both black, were arrested in the murder spree on Oct. 24, while sleeping at a rural Maryland rest area. They were in a dark blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice.
John Lee Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo
Some Montgomery county police officers charge that Moose was reluctant to release the suspects' race throughout the manhunt, because he had agreed with the Justice Department to end racial profiling in the county in 2000. Moose, who has blamed "systemic racism" for what he calls an "overrepresentation" of blacks on death row, also ended racial profiling in Portland, Ore., when he served as that city's police chief.
"Moose didn't want his officers stopping every black in Montgomery County," said one officer who worked on the investigation. "Of course, it was OK to stop every white in a white box truck."
The officer, who wished to remain nameless, says he knows that Moose personally was aware of the descriptions of Muhammad and Malvo as early as Oct. 21, the day before they took their last victim, a bus driver in Aspen Hill.
"Once he had the info, he didn't disclose it, and Conrad Johnson, the last victim, was killed," he said.
Moose has been working closely with Johnson's family to lobby state lawmakers for even tougher gun laws in Maryland.
Moose was positive enough about at least Muhammad's identity that he secretly dispatched a team of undercover agents, led by a Special Investigations Division commander, to stake out Muhammad's ex-wife's house two days before he was captured, as WorldNetDaily first reported. Moose swore the agents to secrecy, and he didn't release a look-out bulletin for Muhammad or Malvo with their physical descriptions for another 24 hours.
Police union officials recently complained in salary arbitration hearings with the county that Moose jeopardized investigators' and patrol officers' safety by withholding the descriptions, as WorldNetDaily also exclusively reported.
"Shame on him. Shame on him and everyone else who knew the look-out and kept it from investigators and patrol officers," another officer said in an internal police department e-mail obtained by WorldNetDaily. "Thank the heavens God was looking out for us, because Moose and his cronies were not."
The same officer called Moose a "self-promoting clown."
A Montgomery County ethics panel ruled last week that the 49-year-old chief cannot cash in on his role in the sniper manhunt with planned book and movie deals.
Moose did not respond to both verbal and written requests for an interview, which were made before he was called early last week to active duty with the U.S. Air National Guard.
This doesn't really pass the smell test.
The Chief Moose Fan Club seems to be winding down these days...
From day one I had a bet going with my fifteen-year-old daughter. I said, "I'll bet you five bucks that when they catch the guy his name is Mohammed." She said, "No, I'll bet you his name is Mohammed!" We ended up exchanging five-dollar bills. (Cool kid--turning into such a gun-loving little right-winger, demonstrating against peaceniks, holding down a job, winning ribbons with the horse she gentled and trained, getting good grades, doing historical interpretation, and this fall joining ROTC.)
PC really sucks, doesn't it?
Many of us in the area had a sense that Moose wasn't being exactly honest from the beginning. We'd see the guy on TV, and his body language screamed "liar!!!".
Too late for that. He's been in local parades, introduced at NBA basketball games, interviewed ad infinitum in the local area. All media driven.
Trial run, maybe? I don't know. You raise some good questions.
But they had killed in other states, although I think all those murders were with a handgun. But they have been tied (IIRC) to a shooting at a liquor store with the same rifle. Based on what I've read and what I know, I just think this story takes too many liberties.
Good point particularly in light of the purported time line described in this story, to wit, when the account was given by the pizza delivery guy to the police which appears to be significantly *after* a shooting where the sniper did hit someone:
Just hours after ... snipers shot out a crafts store window here ... a pizza delivery man on shift next to the store told local police he saw two short-haired black males leave the scene – laughing and "high-fiving" each otherCould this witness's mind have combined several factors together that were *not* in reality coupled together in time?...
The snipers shot out a window at a Michaels craft store here in Aspen Hill at 5:20 p.m. on Oct. 2.
About 45 minutes later, they shot and killed a 55-year-old man in a grocery store parking lot in nearby Wheaton, Md.
Will never happen.
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