HOLLYWOOD, Md. — It's been 20 years, but Paul LaRuffa still cries listening to audio of a 911 dispatcher telling him he wouldn't let him die.
The now-retired Prince George's County restaurant owner was bleeding out, his lungs collapsed, shot five times by a 17-year-old who would go on to become one half of the most notorious sniper team ever to terrorize the Washington region.
"He says you should sit down," a friend said on a recording of the call, relaying instructions from the dispatcher to LaRuffa after the shooting close to midnight on Sept. 5, 2002.
"All right, but I don’t want to die here!" LaRuffa said, struggling in the parking lot.
"We’re not going to let that happen, we’re coming out there to help you," the 911 call taker responds, his voice calm and reassuring.
Twenty Octobers ago, the D.C. region was wracked with fear. The sniper team of Lee Boyd Malvo and John Muhammad were shooting people seemingly at random, killing 10 and critically wounding more, including five people murdered in five separate shootings in a single day.
The victims were pumping gas, going shopping, walking to school and mowing the lawn.
The snipers had attacked LaRuffa in Clinton, Maryland one month earlier. LaRuffa said fate gave him a chance to survive.
"Most of them had zero chance," he said of the snipers' victims. "They were alive one minute, and dead the next second."
LaRuffa had just closed his Prince George’s restaurant and thrown his laptop and the day’s receipts in the back seat.
"I heard a loud, loud sound at the same time as the window exploded," he said.
Malvo had run up and shot him repeatedly through the driver's side window, and then reached in the back door and grabbed the laptop and the bag of money.
"One bullet went through my arm into my chest, one went into my diaphragm," LaRuffa said, pointing to the now healed scars. "Another went in my side. And one went in my…. neck right by my spine."
He spent eight or nine hours in surgery, and then more than a month peering out his door and windows, worried the shooter might come back to finish the job. It was only after Malvo and Muhammad were captured late in October that he could finally sleep again.
LaRuffa never got a chance to thank everyone who helped him.
"I get emotional listening to that when I say, ‘I don’t want to die in this parking lot.’ And when that guy says. ‘We’re not going to let that happen!’... That gets me. I regret I never met that guy," he said.
LaRuffa sold the restaurant. It has been replaced by a vape shop, although the sign is still up. LaRuffa is still mad that the snipers used the $3,500 of proceeds from robbing and shooting him to finance three weeks of terror.
But his healing has been miraculous, and he’s no longer haunted by the snipers.
"If I had to die that night, I wasn’t afraid," he said, his voice catching. "I just didn’t want that to be my time. And I’m glad it wasn’t."
Virginia executed Muhammad in 2009.
Malvo’s serving four life terms in Virginia and was sentenced to another six in Maryland. He's currently eligible for parole in Virginia, and his legal team won an appeal to Maryland's highest court for a new sentencing hearing. The resentencing will remain within the discretion of the sentencing court for Malvo. Currently, no information has been released as to when the Supreme Court resentencing will begin.
LaRuffa worked with the Campaign For Fair Sentencing of Youth to help young offenders get released from prison. But he's mad he never received an apology from Malvo."
"I just feel he probably will be [released] someday, and I don’t know when that day is," LaRuffa said. "But I do know it shouldn’t be now."
LaRuffa is retired and living near the water in St. Mary's County. He has a couple of horses, including a big flawed racehorse he named "Sniper Survivor." Though he says he's not obsessing over the shooting, he'll never forget it either.