October 2, 2002. The one-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks had come and gone. The Maryland State Police had established undercover operators who were beginning to infiltrate groups that we had identified as suspect, or that were known to include people on the terrorist watch list. With the aid of troopers and commanders from all twenty-three barracks, the Criminal Intelligence Division had identified hundreds of potential targets as well as critical infrastructure, and was attempting to harden those targets by working not only with the federal government, but also with our citizens and private industry.
In addition to military installations and high-value terrorist targets, critical infrastructure included bridges, stadiums, communications hubs, and other public and private structures that, if attacked, could cause a serious disruption of life. We had also identified locations and facilities where multiple casualties could occur during an attack, and had developed plans for making those much more difficult to breach. We had also worked with local, county, and city first-responders statewide to update old, out-of-date plans on what to do if something did happen.
After identifying every critical business and infrastructure in the state, we initiated ongoing outreach programs to make those businesses and infrastructure managers aware of the latest intelligence that we could share with them, and we encouraged them to take steps to protect themselves against a potential attack. It was sort of the old crime prevention program on steroids. We helped them identify weaknesses in their physical security and familiarized ourselves with what each company did in order to evaluate what, if any, value it would have to a terrorist trying to disrupt business or damage our country in any way. It was shocking how many facilities there were in Maryland that, if attacked, could affect not just Maryland, but the entire nation as well.
Obviously, companies with U.S. government contracts—especially those related to the defense industry—were considered high on the list of potential targets. We encouraged those companies to report anything suspicious to us, no matter how insignificant it may seem. We provided them with information on how to spot persons or groups that may be watching their businesses. In private industry, these precautions would have been called a “continuity of business plan”; in our world, they were emergency response plans. Once again the state police didn’t receive additional troopers or resources; we were just spreading the peanut butter a little thinner on the bread.
Then, on the evening of October 2, a bullet pierced a glass storefront window at a Michaels craft store at Northgate Plaza in Aspen Hill, Montgomery County. The incident was treated as a random shooting. No one was hurt—the bullet went through the storefront window, missing the cashier working at her register. Because of our heightened focus on terrorism, this shooting nearly went unnoticed.
Until it happened again that same day. Shortly after the first shooting, James Martin was loading groceries into the back of his car at a Shoppers Food Warehouse parking lot on Georgia Avenue in Wheaton when a bullet killed him on the spot.
Not knowing the reasons for either shooting, law enforcement considered Martin’s murder a random act of violence committed by an unknown person. Any number of reasons could have applied: robbery, revenge, jealousy, another gang-related killing. The Montgomery County police began their homicide investigation into the Martin murder just as they would for any other homicide in their area. As of yet, no one had any reason to tie the two shootings together.
Montgomery County is a heavily populated urban county north of Washington, D.C. Most of the county is located outside the Washington Beltway. The county shares borders with Prince Georges County to the south and east, Howard County to northeast, and Frederick County to the north, with the state of Virginia across the Potomac River to the west. Montgomery County is home to a mixed bag of residents, from the very wealthy to the working class. It serves as headquarters for many different high-tech companies, most of which do business with the federal government.
When the first bullet pierced the window at the Michaels store, police assumed it was either random violence or the careless act of some drunk or vandal bent on tearing up somebody else’s property just for the hell of it. In a county the size of Montgomery—approximately nine hundred thousand people—police received dozens of destruction-of-property calls every day. In the northern, more rural part of the county, it’s not unusual to come across road signs with a bullet hole or two punched through them. No one at either Michaels or the Montgomery County Police Department could have predicted the horror show that was about to befall their community—in fact, the entire region.