Survivor of Beltway Sniper Wants Justice, but Won't Witness Execution

Nov. 10, 2009— -- Paul LaRuffa wants to know justice will be carried out tonight at 9 p.m. in the "Death Chamber" at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Va. – he just doesn't want to see it.

LaRuffa, who, by most accounts, was the first victim of the D.C. snipers, who carried out a weeks-long rampage of terror and murder in and around Washington, D.C., in 2002, says the first question he was asked after John Allen Muhammadwas sentenced to death in 2003, was whether he planned to attend his assailant's execution.

"I've given every day of the past seven years to thinking about what he did to me. I don't need to give up another day for him. It's enough to know justice is being done," he said of his decision not to attend Tuesday's planned execution of Muhammad.

The Supreme Court refused on Monday to grant Muhammad a stay of execution, and today Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine denied his last appeal for clemency.

LaRuffa, 62, miraculously survived five gunshots at close range to his chest, spine, diaphragm and stomach, when Muhammad and his 17-year-old accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo robbed him of $3,500 and a laptop computer on Sept. 5, 2002.

The computer, later found in Muhammad's car, linked the assailants to LaRuffa. The money they stole funded a barbarous campaign that October, in which the two men shot innocent people at random while they carried out the most prosaic of tasks: pumping gas, leaving a restaurant, or arriving at middle school – which left 10 people dead.

"What started with me on Sept. 5, 2002, finally ends in that cell on Tuesday," LaRuffa said.

It took a surprisingly short time for LaRuffa to heal physically, but it took much longer for him mend psychically and get over the desire to see – with his own eyes – his assailant executed.

"The difference is time. If I could have killed him with my bare hands when they captured him, I would have. But you can't hold that anger for seven years. I'm satisfied justice will be done. It satisfies those families in worse shape than me – the families of those who lost loved ones," he said.