Muhammad executed -- local news, but it had been a very big deal 2 years ago

This is not exactly 'national scene' breaking news, but he had D.C. very upset two years ago.

News Alert
09:14 PM EST Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Sniper John Allen Muhammad executed in Virginia

John Allen Muhammad, the sniper who kept the Washington region paralyzed by fear for three weeks in 2002 as he and a young accomplice gunned down people at random, has been executed by lethal injection.

For more information, visit washingtonpost.com - http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/7CWL7Z/IMKC8/WBQWKV/VOENK2/JJZID/9A/t

The more complete story from The Post the next day.

I searched for "john muhammad" and "muhammad executed" and both returned 1500 messages. I thought "muhammad executed" was the more staightforwardly connected with The Post report. So that is what I used.

The search started at 9:20 p.m. November 10, 2009. According to the tweets he was executed at 9:11 p.m. Eastern. So the search started about an hour later.

The decline in messaging was very quick: 1600 first day, 800 second day, and approaching 0 through the 15th. The total number of messages was 2466. The final timeline was

It is time to bring the search to a close.

The .txt file that can be read by Excel to acquire the data is: muhammad executed.txt