A young Iraq war veteran was gunned down near a popular shopping center in a crime that shocked a peaceful Virginia community. Police are still struggling to determine a motive for the 2006 killing.
Paul Zeller, 24, served as a mortarman with the 82nd Airborne Division before receiving an honorable discharge in September 2004.
He moved to Northern Virginia to live with his older sister Lydia Robertson and her family and took a job at a car dealership in College Park. He was beginning to readjust to a normal life after the Army.
Around midnight June 29, 2006, Zeller was walking home from the Pentagon City Metro station in Arlington after working the late shift.
He was shot multiple times in the upper body at close range and left to die on the 1300 block of South Joyce Street, near the Pentagon Row shopping center.
Zeller’s body was found early the next morning, a Friday, and police interviewed several eyewitnesses at the scene. They continued to canvass the upscale shopping area throughout the weekend, passing out fliers and trying to find more witnesses.
Investigators generated “dozens of credible leads” over that first weekend, The Examiner reported at the time.
But almost three years have passed, and police still have no idea who killed Zeller or why. They are forced to consider every possibility — gang activity, an altercation, a random act of violence — and are looking to the public for help.
Zeller’s parents are still struggling to comprehend what happened to the youngest of their eight children.
Coming so soon after he returned from Iraq, the loss was especially painful.
“He came back from Baghdad safely, to a safe country,” his mother, Lois Zeller, wrote on a Web site dedicated to Paul’s memory.
“So, what an unimaginable shock it was to have that phone call telling us he had been killed.”
Arlington police say that any new information, no matter how insignificant it seems, could help detectives solve the case. Anyone with information should call 1-866-411-TIPS. There is a reward of up to $10,000.
