WASHINGTON.
THE beasts are behind bars and at last the kids are free.
Today the idyllic playground near Capitol View waits for joyous, screaming tots to run to the swings.
Mothers like Kathleen McKenna – who on Wednesday exhorted parents to fight against the snipers – will no longer have to deliver and pick up her 8-year-old boy, Spencer.
Today the school bus works for her just fine.
“We’ve felt like prisoners in our own home,” said Barbara Keckler, of Hagerstown, Md.
“We finally feel like we’ve been set free.”
John Lloyd, principal of Benjamin Tasker Middle School, where a 13-year-old student was shot, tells me, “We’re ready to set our little folk free.”
Yesterday, directives to give the kids fresh air were held up until it was clear that cops had the bad guys dead to rights.
But already Jeb Stewart HS in Virginia had the cross-country team sucking oxygen: The field-hockey team took to the grass for the first time in almost three weeks.
Reginald Gordon, athletic director of Dunbar HS, was ecstatic.
“First, the killings are over. The fear is over,” he said.
“And I’m happy for the kids. I expect our champion football team, the Crimson Tide, will be back in action today. I’m happy for that, but we’ll always think of the victims.”
Halloween is back on track and homecoming queens will be crowned.
If you stretch your ears and listen, you can almost hear the collective sigh of relief from down here.
The helicopters that had hovered over schools like something out of an urban “Apocalypse Now” suddenly fell silent. And the silence is deafening.
Mark Wilson, who had delivered daughter Crystal to school Wednesday and waited to pick her up, was much calmer.
He told me he wanted to take her out of the school until “this garbage” is all taken care of.
Crystal did not miss a day.
Susan De Ford, a journalist from The Washington Post who made sure she was personally there to pick up her son Ryan when the trauma was at its height, now can go back to being a 24-hour journalist.
Ryan is safe, Crystal is safe, and if we can banish nightmares, kids have a way of forgetting. People as old and ugly as I don’t. That’s why I believe this dirty rotten bastard should be executed.
Realtor Michael Patterson, who works for a family-owned business in Silver Springs, Md., said he was happy to hear the preliminary reports of the bust – but he was not entirely convinced the crime spree was over.
“It’s a little too early to tell,’ said Patterson, the residue of fear still heavy on his shoulders.
“Everybody is looking for closure. But we need a total confirmation. When we get that, there will be a great sense of relief.
“My kudos to the cops. Thank God they’re there.”
At the Crisp and Juicy fast-food restaurant, just near where Sara Ramos was shot, business swung into high gear.
When I was there on Tuesday, I was the only customer.
The gas is pumping again, people are selling again – but the main thing – kids of all ages have been liberated from fear.
Felix Stroecher years ago was partners with John Muhammad in a martial arts studio in Tacoma, Wash.
That is, Stroecher said, until Muhammad ripped him off for $500.
“But if you heard him talk, he would come on like he was always righting the wrongs,” said Stroecher.
Muhammad now has a real chance to right wrongs.
He can decide to face justice in the courts of Virginia or Alabama.
Montgomery, Ala., Police Chief John Wilson, who is probing the demonic duo on an unrelated murder charge dating back to Sept. 21, puts such a choice into focus.
“We have the death penalty down here,” he said.