WA 5 Final

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/18/AR2008011802663.html





December 4th, 2006. 5:43 A.M. 




Jeff Mussafi knelt outside the hospital room, toward Mecca, and prayed the Muslim chants he had recited every day since he was a boy. He clasped his hands tightly between his forehead and the cool, citrus-scented linoleum floor.


الَّذِينَ ءامَنُو
اْ إِذَا قُمْتُمْ إِلَى الصَّلاةِ فاغْسِلُواْ وُجُوهَكُمْ وَأَيْدِيَكُمْ إِلَى الْمَرَافِقِ وَامْسَحُواْ

بِرُؤُوسِكُمْ وَأَرْجُلَكُمْ إِلَى الْكَعْبَ






قال الله تعالى:
يَا أَيُّهَا

His lips hummed the words of the Koran over and over until the prayer was complete and his morning devotions were finished. Jeff stood, removed his tazcat, returned his holster to the belt of his stiff black pants and resumed his post, his back to the door of his charge’s room.

The prisoner, Brandon Morris, had stabbed himself in the leg three times with a table knife so he could spend time in the hospital with minimal security between him and his freedom. Despite the weapon he carried, Jeff was vulnerable to the man behind the thin hospital wall.

With a crash and a thud, Brandon leapt from his bed, opened the door, yanked the un-expecting guard’s gun from its holster and shot Jeff in the back of the head. Brandon hobbled away, his injured leg dragging behind him. Jeff lay on the ground, blood pooling around his lifeless body, to be discovered moments later by the terrified nurses down the hall. 





Brandon got away. He ran as fast as he could down the deserted hallway and fled the hospital through an emergency exit. He hijacked a stalled taxicab and drove west through Georgetown.

He is still out there. To Brandon Morris, freedom is worth stabbing himself and killing an innocent man who had never done him any harm. There’s no telling what he will do to avoid imprisonment once again.