A Suitland Man Was Visiting a Friend. Then He Was Dead.

A 'Stranger' Killing, Rare in Fairfax, Police Say, Robbed Family of 'an Ideal Father' and Husband

There was nothing unusual about Mike Ross driving over to Virginia late on a Saturday night, checking in on a hard-drinking friend who had no car, the son of his mentor in the electrician's trade. He'd have a beer, maybe watch a late basketball game.

Just as he always did, Ross parked behind his friend's apartment building in the Penn Daw area of Fairfax County, then walked over to the sliding-glass door on the ground floor and knocked on the glass. His friend pulled back the curtain just as a shadowy figure darted toward Ross, trying to rob him. In a flash, Ross was shot twice. Dead.

Early last Mother's Day, Cynthia Ross was awakened by the knock of two Fairfax homicide detectives outside her home in Suitland. She remembers vividly her disbelief that her husband could be shot by a stranger for no reason. She remembers her son listening at the top of the stairs, paralyzed by the news.

Cynthia Ross is still in shock, as are her three teenage children, to whom Michael Ross was "just an ideal father," according to their school principal. "I speak of him daily at school" to other parents, said Mary Hawkins, principal of Holy Family Catholic School in Hillcrest Heights.

But on the first anniversary of his killing, Fairfax police still don't know who killed Ross, 49. Unlike more than 90 percent of the homicides in Fairfax, or anywhere, Ross's death was a true "stranger" killing -- not a gang clash, or a domestic blow-up, or an ongoing feud, but an innocent person who randomly encounters a malicious force and winds up dead.

"He was my fiber, he was my best friend, he was my soul," said Cynthia Ross, 43. "He was everything to us." Her children, ages 19, 17 and 14, often talk about their father, but never about that night.

"Mike Ross was at the right place," Detective Chester Toney said. "The timing was just wrong."

The killing consumes Toney like none other. Fairfax has 10 to 20 homicides a year, most solved quickly. The number of stranger slayings in the county of a million-plus residents, in recent years, can be counted on one hand. Toney is proud that none of his cases have been shipped to the cold-case squad.

Still, "It's hard for me to pick up the phone and call Mrs. Ross," he said. "Because I don't have anything to tell her."

Ross was an only child, raised by a single mother and his grandparents in the District. He played football at Roosevelt High School and Rochester Junior College, then returned to this area. He married in 1986, and he and his wife settled in Suitland to raise their children. He trained and then became a journeyman wireman.

He was strict with his kids, with his co-workers, with everyone, his friends said. He would occasionally drive his children through the tougher parts of the District, his wife said, to "show them what could happen if they didn't go to school, didn't do their homework, didn't listen to their teachers." He was determined to maintain the solid family structure in Suitland he never had growing up, his wife said.

He coached youth basketball at Holy Family, but the kids could not play until their homework was done, his wife said.