ASHLAND, Va. -- The unique charm and colorful aesthetic of downtown Ashland helped lead to its moniker: the Center of the Universe. Many people who call the town home remember well the night it became the center of attention for the nation twenty years ago.
On October 19, 2002, John Allen Mohammad and Lee Boyd Malvo shot a 37-year man in the parking lot of the Ponderosa Steakhouse on England Street. The attack marked the farthest south the “D.C. Snipers” got during the weeks-long rampage, in which they shot more than a dozen people, killing many and cloaking the region in tension.
Barlett Shaw works at Cross Brothers grocery and tracks his family’s connection to Ashland back at least three generations. Shaw passed by the scene the day after the shooting.
“I drove through it all, you know, the police barricades and all that stuff because I had go up Rt. 54, and that's where I found out about it,” he said. “From what I recall, things got pretty tense because now they're in our neighborhood. Who knows? Are they still here? Are they moving farther down or are they going back up north? You just didn't know. You were in just a fog of what they were doing.”
Muhammad and Malvo were arrested five days after the Ashland shooting. Later, it was revealed they fired from a wooded area behind the Ponderosa, which is no longer there. These days, a chain Chinese restaurant occupies the lot. The snipers left a cryptic note tacked to a tree in the wooded area.
“There's a weird trail back there, anyway, that I've only done once. But where they were behind the Ponderosa it's, you get a weird sense,” Shaw said.
“Every time I would drive by Ponderosa, which now has been destroyed and something else gone up there, I would think about that because it's a real tragedy. I mean, that man, he was a visitor to Ashland on his vacation, I suppose,” said Suzanne Wolstenholme, owner of Ashland Institution “Homemades by Suzanne.
“I don't think anybody went in their homes and closed the doors and stayed there. But, you know, they were glad to probably get back home and close the door once they had gone out. It's just never left your mind while that was happening,” she said reflecting on the days following the shooting.
The night of the Ashland attack, Wolstenholme and some of her employees were catering a wedding in Caroline County. At the time, investigators had put out a bulletin warning the snipers might be driving a white van or box truck.
Muhammad and Malvo were arrested in a dark blue Chevy Caprice modified for the attacks, but the night of the Ashland shooting, one of Wolstenholme’s employees drove their white van filled with equipment back from the wedding.
“There was a helicopter that followed him all the way back to Ashland,” she said. “That’s something he’ll always remember.”
The five days between the Ashland shooting and the arrest of the snipers grow farther away in time but still serve as a dark time in the town renowned for its brightness.
“It was very frightening. We were very glad when they caught them,” Wolstenholme said. “ I think it was just another example of when you leave your house in the morning, you better be right with everybody, your friends, your family, and God, because you never know. You just don't know, make the best of the day.”
COMPLETE COVERAGE: CBS 6 Crime Insider Jon Burkett spoke with two men who helped lead the investigation into the Ashland shooting. Watch his reports on CBS 6 News at 6pm and 11 pm.
