On a cold Monday morning, January 25, 1993, Frank Alanson Darling, a 28-year-old male employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, was on his way to work at the CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He was a passenger in a car, sitting beside his wife, Judy, as they waited in a line of vehicles at a traffic light on Route 123, preparing to turn into the agency's main entrance. It was a routine start to the day that would soon turn into a scene of terror and tragedy.
Without warning, a man emerged from a vehicle that had stopped behind the line of cars. Armed with an AK-47 assault rifle, the lone gunman began moving between the stopped cars, indiscriminately firing into them. In the chaos that ensued, Frank Darling was struck and killed. In a car nearby, Dr. Lansing Heppe Bennett, a 66-year-old physician and analyst for the CIA, was also fatally shot. Three other individuals were wounded in the attack. Miraculously, Frank's wife was uninjured in the driver's seat.
The gunman, later identified as Pakistani national Mir Aimal Kasi, fled the scene immediately after the shooting. A massive international manhunt was launched to find him. For four years, Kasi remained a fugitive. In 1997, he was located and captured in Pakistan and was subsequently extradited to the United States to face justice.
Kasi's trial resulted in a conviction for the murders of Frank Darling and Lansing Bennett, as well as the other charges related to the shooting. He was sentenced to death for his crimes. On November 14, 2002, Mir Aimal Kasi was executed for the ambush that had taken the lives of two men and forever altered the lives of many others. In recognition of his service, Frank Alanson Darling was posthumously awarded the CIA's Intelligence Commendation medal.
