John Allen Muhammad had grand plans to extort millions of dollars from authorities in the 2002 Washington-area sniper shootings so he could set up a camp to train children how to terrorize cities and "shut things down," accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo testified on Tuesday.

Asked whether he believed Muhammad's plans, Malvo said yes.

"He's a man of his word. If he tells you he is going to do something, it is done," Malvo said. "If he says it, it is legit."

Malvo, who had never before taken the witness stand against his fellow sniper, gave the most detailed account yet of the planning that went into the three-week shooting spree that left 10 people dead at gas stations and parking lots.

Malvo also said Muhammad devised a two-phase plan to shoot as many as six random people each day for 30 days in the Washington area and then target children and police officers with explosives. They planned to place explosives on school buses in Baltimore, kill a Baltimore police officer and then set off explosives packed with ball bearings at the officer's funeral.

When Malvo asked Muhammad why, he said, "For the sheer terror of it the worst thing you can do to people is aim at their children."

Midway through the spree, Malvo said, Muhammad described the plans to take money they would extort from authorities to end the sniper shootings and establish a Canadian commune to train 140 homeless children in terrorist shooting and bombings to "continue the mission" in other cities.

After the October 9, 2002, shooting of Dean Myers in Manassas, Virginia, Muhammad was upset that the two were not meeting their self-imposed quota of six shootings a day. Malvo said he became upset and refused to talk to Muhammad. At one point, Malvo said he put on headphones, listened to music and refused to acknowledge Muhammad.

Muhammad responded angrily, and told Malvo, "I'm not going to deal with it. When people have doubts is when they get caught."

Muhammad, 45, and Malvo, now 21, were arrested October 24, 2002, at a western Maryland rest stop.

They have already been convicted in Virginia for a sniper murder there. Muhammad received a death sentence while Malvo was given a life term.

Prosecutors in Maryland have said they are pursuing a second trial in case the Virginia conviction is overturned on appeal and to provide justice in Montgomery County, where six of the 10 killings occurred.

In his testimony, Malvo said he was so distraught after the six-hour conversation in July 2002 outlining plans for the spree that he played Russian roulette, crying in a bathtub. He pulled the trigger several times before realizing the next trigger pull would be fatal.

"I just broke down. I couldn't pull the trigger," Malvo said.

He described how he spent the night in a Baltimore cemetery, training a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle on a fast food restaurant, waiting for pregnant women. He said he saw four, but could not bring himself to shoot.

The pair scouted dozens of shooting sites in the region. They looked for scenes that had few surveillance cameras, a limited number of witnesses and easy escape routes. They stopped at many shooting sites, such as shopping malls, parking lots and the area around Howard University in Washington, D.C., but aborted because too many people were nearby.

Malvo said he shot three people during the spree, but that Muhammad was the triggerman in the others. Malvo said he was supposed to shoot five children at a Bowie middle school on October 7, 2002 as they got off a bus, but that no buses arrived. Instead, he shot 13-year-old Iran Brown.

Source: China Daily