The youngest survivor of the Beltway sniper shootings that terrorized the D.C. region 20 years ago was a middle school student in Prince George’s County when he was shot.
“I’m very thankful and blessed to still be alive,” Iran Brown said. “And I definitely look at life as more precious than before.”
He was a seventh grader at Benjamin Tasker Middle School where his aunt had just dropped him off one morning when he heard the blast.
“Maybe took a couple steps, and then I just heard this loud bang, and my aunt, she put the car in reverse and picked me up, and we went to the closest medical clinic,” Brown said.
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Brown said he was shot once in the upper body with a hollow-point bullet and still suffers from nerve damage.
“When it pierced me, it broke into a bunch of pieces, so I still got fragments inside of me to this day,” he said.
Brown, his family and his doctors say his aunt’s quick actions helped save his life.
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The shooting marked the first time the snipers targeted a child, heightening fears that if they were willing to shoot at a school, was anyone safe?
“Obviously, crossed the line for good reason,” Brown said. “They wanted to get the media’s attention and they wanted to attack the most vulnerable.”
Schools in the D.C. area stopped having recess and other outdoor activities. Brown said he wondered before he was shot why that hadn’t already happened.
“I even remember saying to the physical education teacher, Why are we still going outside?” he said. “Even me being so young I was aware that the snipers were in the area.”
Brown said he lives with anxiety but focuses on being grateful he survived.
John Allen Muhammed got the death penalty, and Lee Boyd Malvo, who was 17 at the time, got multiple life sentences. One of the many questions Brown would like to ask Malvo is why Malvo didn’t shoot Brown in the head, as Muhammed instructed.
Brown is writing his life story and hopes to self-publish next year. He wants to tell his story in his words and share it with the world.
