In September 2002, Hong Im Ballenger, 45, a Baton Rouge wife and mother, was robbed and killed by a single gunshot to the head as she left work at a Florida Boulevard beauty supply store.
“She was a beautiful woman and a wonderful mother to my three sons,” her husband, Jim Ballenger, said the following day.
His wife died at the hands of John Allen Muhammad, 41, a New Orleans-born and Baton Rouge-raised former U.S. Army sergeant who later became known as the DC Sniper, and his accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, 17, born in Jamaica and relocating to Miami illegally in 2001. The woman was one of the duo’s preliminary victims. Shootings in Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Texas and Washington also were eventually linked to the pair.
When their subsequent 23-day reign of terror through Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia was over, 10 people were dead and three critically injured, bringing the assailants’ 10-month tally to 17 deaths and 10 wounded. They were captured at a rest stop in Maryland on Oct. 24, 2002.
Although all of the serial attacks seemed random at the time, it would be revealed in court proceedings that it was all part of an elaborate plan to kill Muhammad’s ex-wife, Mildred, and gain custody of their three children.
Mildred Muhammad, 65, who lives in Maryland, will tell her story in ID’s “Hunted by My Husband: The Untold Story of the DC Sniper” at 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Appropriately, the new documentary is airing during Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
“The man that I married was a complete stranger,” Mildred Muhammad says in the documentary.
Viewers will hear her tell of years of emotional, financial and psychological abuse she endured before her ex-husband’s killing spree.
“When the person you love becomes the one you fear, you are scared to the core of your being. Everything you thought was real has become an illusion, it is disconcerting,” Muhammad said in 2009. “You feel as though you have fallen into a deep hole and there is nothing to hold onto, because there, everything you thought was there is gone, and you slip deeper and deeper.”
“Through exclusive interviews, never-before-seen home video of the Muhammad family, and commentary from domestic violence experts and law enforcement officers who worked tirelessly to track and identify the snipers, the documentary explores how the justice system, media and public perception missed critical warning signs of abuse and coercive control, and challenges our society as a whole to rethink what we know of domestic violence,” a show synopsis states.
“John Muhammad had a plan. He was going to kill her and then she would be just another random victim of the DC Sniper,” says one of the detectives.
Charged with murder, terrorism, conspiracy and the illegal use of a firearm, John Muhammad was convicted, received the death penalty and died by lethal injection in 2009. Malvo, now 40, was also found guilty and is serving four consecutive life sentences in a Virginia prison.
Mildred Muhammad has turned her trauma into an avenue to help other abuse victims. She is an award-winning author, public speaker and domestic violence awareness advocate. She also serves on the Maryland Board of Victim Services, is a certified Consultant for the U.S. Department of Justice, a speaker for the U.S. Department of State and a CNN contributor.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline is available to provide help at thehotline.org or the No More Foundation at declarenomore.com.
