Officials in Virginia have denied parole for a man convicted in a series of sniper-style shootings that terrorized the Washington D.C. region two decades ago. Lee Boyd Malvo was 17 when he and John Allen Muhammad fatally shot 10 people and wounded three others in a series of random shootings in October 2002.
The AP reports the pair killed several other victims in the months prior as they made their way to the D.C. region from Washington state. Prior to the killings, Jamaican-born Malvo lived in Fort Myers briefly with his mother and attended Cypress Lake High School in Lee County for about two months in 2001.
Malvo was sentenced to life in prison without parole after being convicted of capital murder for three of the fatal shootings in Virginia, but later U.S. Supreme Court rulings and a change in Virginia state law gave him the chance to seek parole. A 2012 Supreme Court ruling struck down life sentences for juveniles as unconstitutional and a law passed in the Virginia legislature two years ago gives juvenile offenders the opportunity to seek parole after 20 years in prison.
The Virginia Parole Board rejected Malvo’s parole request on the grounds that he remains a risk to the community. Malvo, now 37, was also sentenced to life in prison in Maryland. In August, the Maryland state supreme court ruled that Malvo must be resentenced for his crimes there.
Malvo is serving his sentence in the super maximum-security Red Onion State Prison in Virginia. His much older accomplice, Muhammad, was executed in Virginia in 2009.
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