On October 24, 2002, police in the eastern US arrested two snipers after their month-long shooting spree left 10 people dead and four wounded.
John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo – known as the Beltway Snipers – were arrested while they were sleeping inside their Chevy Caprice family sedan.
The FBI and police found a Bushmaster rifle used in the attacks inside the car, but that was not all.
The pair had also cut a hole in the trunk near the licence plate so that shots could be fired from within the vehicle. It was, in effect, a rolling sniper’s nest.
The pair’s reign of terror over the state of Maryland began on October 2, 2002 when a shot was fired through a craft store window, but no one was injured.
But then the same day a 55-year-old US government public servant was killed when he was gunned down in a shopping centre carpark.
More deaths followed: a landscaper was shot dead while mowing a client’s lawn; other victims were fatally shot while refuelling their vehicles at service station.
An off-duty FBI crime analyst was felled by a bullet when she left a home improvement store with her husband.
In the only killing in the US capital, Washington, DC, and the first one to occur at night, an elderly man was shot while out walking and later died from his wounds in hospital.
The deadly shootings left residents terrified, with many changing their daily routines in a bid to stay alive.
Many service stations, a common target for the snipers, hung giant sheeting around the forecourt and pumps in an attempt to shield customers from the shooters’ view.
Meanwhile, US law enforcement agencies mobilised hundreds of investigators to hunt the gunmen.
Their big break in the case came when an unknown person called police to make a ransom demand.
In a bid to establish credibility, they claimed a previous murder in Alabama.
Fingerprint records from the crime scene matched those of Malvo.
A former arrest file later led investigators to identify Muhammad as his accomplice.
Following the snipers’ arrests and convictions, Muhammad received a death sentence and was executed in November, 2009. Malvo was convicted and received life sentences without parole.
