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Clearwater shooting victim not interested in D.C. sniper's execution

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 10, 2009

Albert Michalczyk isn't going to pay much attention to John Allen Muhammad's last breath - prearranged for tonight - even though Michalczyk is convinced Muhammad shot him seven years ago on a Clearwater golf course.

Muhammad is condemned to die tonight on a gurney inside a Virginia prison. He is one of two snipers who terrorized the Washington, D.C., area in fall of 2002.

Michalczyk is sure that he is among the first victims of Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo when when he was shot in the months before they terrorized residents in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

During a visit with his daughter in Clearwater in 2002, Michalczyk had gone out for a round of golf at Glen Oaks Golf Course. As he readied a tee shot on the seventh hole, he said he heard a bang and felt a thud on his chest. Then, he said, came the blood.

"I was with my family," he said. "They called paramedics right away."

The bullet, likely from a .22-caliber rifle, passed through him and was never recovered, he said.

"I was out of the hospital a couple of hours later," he said in a telephone interview this morning from his home near Tucson, Ariz.

Initially, Michalczyk and investigators didn't know who shot him. Then, the sniper rampage unfolded in the mid-Atlantic region, and in October 2002, authorities arrested Muhammad and Malvo.

Since then, Michalczyk has concluded that, even though no one has ever been charged with the shooting, Muhammad and Malvo, who was then 17, are the snipers that shot him.

Police say the pair may have been in the Clearwater area at the time, and Malvo had mentioned to a friend that they had singled out a couple of golfers before the D.C. slayings. But the caliber of the weapon used in the Washington and Clearwater shootings did not match, and police remain skeptical about charges ever being filed in the Michalczyk shooting.

Muhammad is scheduled to die by lethal injection at the Greensville Correctional Center in Virginia tonight. His appeals have been turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court, and his attorneys have asked the governor to commute Muhammad's sentence to life in prison because they say he is mentally ill.

Malvo is serving a life sentence in Virginia. To get Malvo to talk about shootings reported outside the D.C. area, authorities in those jurisdictions must offer immunity; prosecutors in Pinellas County won't do that.

Authorities in Pinellas have said they doubt whether they can bring charges or a get a conviction.

Michalczyk will check tonight to see whether the execution had taken place, he said. But that's the extent of his interest.

"If it's on television," he said, "I'll watch it."

Executions are not televised.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report. Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760.

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