VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - Hoping to elude the serial sniper's scope, Jeffrey and Stephanie Hopper drove as far south into Virginia as they could one evening last October before stopping just north of Richmond to buy gas and find dinner.
Outside the Ponderosa Restaurant off Interstate 95, they held hands as they walked to their car. They kissed in the dark. Then, they heard an explosion as a bullet screamed toward them from the cover of woods nearby.
Jeffrey Hopper felt his abdomen being ripped open, he testified in court yesterday.
"I thought it important to lie down, so I lied down in the pavement there," said Hopper, 38, adding that his wife took off his shirt and found an entrance wound the size of an eraser head. "I took the opportunity to tell her I loved her, and then we prayed together."
The testimony of Jeffrey Hopper - the final sniper victim to survive - came at the end of an emotional day in the trial of sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad.
Jurors also heard from the husband and daughter of FBI analyst Linda Franklin, killed at a Fairfax Home Depot, as well as the 911 call that Franklin's husband made as his wife died.
Prosecutors have now presented evidence in 15 of the 16 shootings across the country that they link to Muhammad, 42, and his teen-age alleged accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo. Muhammad, who is on trial in the death Oct. 9 of last year of Dean H. Meyers , faces the death penalty if he is convicted.
The prosecution is painstakingly building a case based on circumstantial evidence and - in no small part - grief and emotion. The jury has heard about a dozen 911 tapes in the past two weeks, seen graphic photos of the victims' injuries and listened to tearful testimony from those who survived the shootings and the relatives of those who did not.
The constant stream of grief appears to be taking a toll on at least some of the 12 jurors and three alternates. As the 911 call made by Linda Franklin's husband, William, was played yesterday, one juror dabbed her eyes with tissues; others hung their heads and shut their eyes.
Franklin was in such shock that his voice rose several octaves, and three times the dispatcher called him "ma'am." Breathing heavily and sobbing loudly, Franklin was able to blurt out to the dispatcher, "My wife. She's shot in the head."
Franklin, a former Marine, was much calmer as he took the stand yesterday and explained that he and his wife of seven years had driven to the Home Depot on Oct. 14 last year to buy light bulbs, shelves and other odds and ends for their new home.
