The Associated Press
TACOMA, Wash. (AP) -- The mother of a woman believed to be an early victim of convicted Washington, D.C.-area snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo is suing the men, seeking to seize any profits they might gain from the case.
Pamala Nichols’ lawsuit also seeks unspecified damages from Tacoma resident Earl Dancy Jr., 35, who owned the .45-caliber handgun used to shoot her daughter, Keenya Cook.
Nichols filed the complaint last Friday in Pierce County Superior Court on behalf of Cook’s daughter, Angeleah Rogers, 2.
Nichols’ attorney, Ben Barcus, acknowledged that Muhammad and Malvo will not likely have any assets worth seizing. Muhammad faces the death penalty and Malvo faces a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
But Barcus said any profits from the books and films likely to emerge from the sniper case should go to their victims.
“The primary focus is to have some kind of provision for this little girl,” Barcus told The (Tacoma) News Tribune. “She doesn’t have a mother now.”
Malvo, 18, has admitted killing Cook, telling police and psychiatrists the shooting was Muhammad’s way of testing him. Pierce County prosecutors have not decided whether to charge Malvo in the shooting.
During Muhammad’s murder trial in Virginia, Dancy admitted loaning weapons to the two men when they stayed with him briefly in early 2002.
“He admitted that he loaned the gun that was used to murder Keenya Cook. We think that’s negligent,” Barcus said.
Dancy has also admitted he illegally bought a Remington 700 rifle from the Tacoma gun shop Bull’s Eye Shooter Supply for Muhammad in 2002. Muhammad, 43, could not legally possess a gun because he was the subject of a domestic violence protective order.
Federal agents are investigating Dancy in relation to that purchase but no charges have been filed.
Dancy could not be reached for comment, and a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle would not comment on the investigation.
A pair of Parkland men stumbled across the rifle in mid-August 2002, finding it in an area apparently abandoned by Muhammad and Malvo only moments before. The rifle was set up on a bipod and aimed at a nearby apartment complex.
Dancy has acknowledged reporting the weapon as stolen to Fife police, at Muhammad’s request.
Nichols’ complaint does not name Bull’s Eye, the gun shop from which Muhammad and Malvo reportedly stole the Bushmaster rifle used in the East Coast shootings.
Barcus said there’s no link between the shop and the .45-caliber handgun used to shoot Cook.
“They didn’t sell the gun,” he said. “We don’t have any information that Bull’s Eye was in any way involved with this weapon.”
Other families of sniper victims sued the Bushmaster company and Bull’s Eye, alleging that at least 238 guns disappeared from the gun shop in the last three years.