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October
25, 2002 9:00 a.m. |
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he most inspiring
story to come out of the horror of September 11 was the heroism of ordinary
firefighters and policemen who perished while saving the lives of others.
There's been nothing comparable to it during the sniper case, and maybe
there can't be. But one hero did die, and I'd like to tell you about him.
His name was Mark Cosslett, and he was a 40-year-old Virginia State Trooper. On Wednesday morning, shortly after D.C.-area parents heard those chilling words — "your children are not safe anywhere at any time" — he posted himself outside a preschool in Alexandria.
Two of my own kids attend Bush Hill Presbyterian Day School, and my wife drives them there every weekday. Since the sniper shootings began, she has wondered whether this morning ritual puts our kids at risk. Wouldn't it be safer just to keep them home until this nightmare ends?
Cosslett's presence comforted her deeply. She thanked him for being there, and raved about him all afternoon and evening — which was passed watching hours of hopeful developments suggesting that the sniper case was about to break. My wife and I couldn't help but think that perhaps the gunman drove by Bush Hill sometime on Wednesday, gave it a hard look, and decided to keep on going because Cosslett was there.
My kids have been mostly unaware of the sniper, though my five-year-old son did explain to me that his outdoor play at school was suspended because "there's a bad man who shoots kids." He and his little sister were completely aware of Cosslett, however. They were thrilled to have him at their school and ecstatic when he handed them plastic "Junior Trooper" badges on their way out the door. When they got home, they raced to their rooms, threw off their shirts, and tossed on the matching navy NYPD shirts that already have gone through our laundry more times than I can count. Much of the rest of the day was spent playing police, with an extensive collection of Hot Wheels, Matchboxes, and Fisher-Price toys called in as props.
Sometime on Wednesday, after leaving Bush Hill — where Cosslett had simply been volunteering his time, and where one of his two young children also attends — he received word of a shooting in Newington. Who knows what went through his mind; perhaps he thought the sniper had struck again. It hardly matters. He raced toward the scene on his motorcycle, riding the right-hand shoulder of I-95, probably to avoid traffic congestion. Along the way, a tow truck pulled in front of him. There was a collision. Cosslett was thrown from his bike. He died on the spot.
My wife and I won't ever forget living through the sniper attacks — nobody in the D.C. area will. The risk that any of us would have fallen to the sniper was slim, but the connections are too personal. One of the murders took place a few hundred feet from where my mother-in-law works. Most occurred near roads that we drive all the time. It wasn't possible to visit a gas station without thinking about the sniper — just as it wasn't possible last fall to look at an airplane without thinking about September 11.
Mark Cosslett is part of the memory as well, and responsible for one of the few positive feelings we've had since the sniper went on his rampage. He may be that bad man's last victim: If he hadn't felt the need to stand guard outside Bush Hill, perhaps he would have been in a different location when that call came from Newington. He might have taken another route. The accident would not have occurred. He would have gone home to see his wife and kids that night. On Thursday morning he would have learned that the sniper, in all probability, had been captured. And he would have lived to be an old man, just as he deserved to.
I never met Mark Cosslett, and wouldn't even have known his name but for his fatal accident. I do know one thing, and I knew it before he was gone: At a time when my family was looking for a hero, there he was.
