Friends recall shooting victim linked to sniper suspects

<p>A man whose shooting death has been linked to convicted sniper killer John Allen Muhammad worked hard and prayed regularly after coming to Atlanta from war-torn Ethiopia.</p><p>After Muhammad was convicted Monday of two counts of capital murder in Virginia for the sniper shootings in the Washington area last year, friends of Million Waldemarian remembered their friend and the Sept. 21, 2002 shooting outside an Atlanta liquor store that left him dead.</p><p>Waldemariam was working at Sammys Package Store when he was killed just seconds after telling the stores owner about two suspicious men sitting in a car in the parking lot.</p><p>He came from Ethiopia to find a better life and he was killed, said Solomon Hagios, Waldemariams friend and next-door neighbor when the two rented opposite sides of a duplex in Atlanta.</p><p>Police linked Waldemarians death to sniper suspects Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, who were accused in the monthlong shooting spree that left 13 people dead in five states and Washington D.C.</p><p>Law enforcement officials in Atlanta said ballistics tests linked the weapon used to kill Waldemariam to the shootings of two people at a Montgomery, Ala., liquor store 18 hours later. Muhammad and Malvo became suspects in the shootings in which one victim died and the other was critically injured.</p><p>After Muhammads conviction Monday and the beginning of Malvos trial, prosecutors in several states are maneuvering to try their cases against the pair. But Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said its not likely they will be prosecuted in Georgia.</p><p>Hagios, Waldemariams neighbor, said he believes that police have forgotten his friend, a kind, gentle 41-year-old man who prayed frequently: He worked hard and he didnt deserve to die, Hagios said.</p><p>Mimi Taddesa, the owner of the liquor store where Waldemariam was killed, said he fled civil war in Ethiopia as a teenager and came to Atlanta in 1996 after moving to Egypt and then Canada.</p><p>Waldemariam would send his mother in Ethiopia as much money as he could every month.</p><p>Taddesa said Waldemariam told her that his mother named him Million because you are one person, but to me you are a million.</p>

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