Leo Whitt was a 48-year-old Virginia State Trooper, a twenty-year veteran, husband and father, killed during a traffic stop on Interstate 95 in Prince George County on the night of April 12, 1985. The driver he stopped had escaped earlier that day from a Maryland drug treatment facility after a string of felonies. That man stole a car, assaulted and robbed his stepfather, picked up a hitchhiker, and drove south on I-95 boasting about his crimes before Trooper Whitt initiated the stop.

As Trooper Whitt approached the vehicle he was shot twice, once in the neck and once between the eyes, and was found by a passing motorist after the shooter fled. The suspect and his companion were arrested hours later in a Richmond suburb. The shooter was identified as Gregory Warren Beaver Jr.; his companion, Andrew Peter Sanborn, was charged with grand larceny of an automobile. Beaver pleaded guilty to the willful, deliberate and premeditated killing of a law enforcement officer and received the death sentence.