A Fairfax County, Virginia, judge sentenced a man to life in prison for shooting and killing his friend before shooting a stranger, blinding that man.
Kebbren Leigh-Gaye, who was just 18 years old, died after the shooting on Jan. 8, 2022, on Richmond Highway (Route 1) at Dart Drive, in the Hybla Valley area. He was a friend of the shooter, then 20-year-old Jordan Cochran, who then turned on a total stranger and shot him in the eye.
Testimony during the trial revealed that Cochran and Leigh-Gaye got into a fistfight at a bus stop over a pair of shoes. Prosecutors said the fight was over and the two had separated when Cochran pulled out a gun and fired one shot, killing Leigh-Gaye.
A witness said Cochran grabbed the shoes off Leigh-Gaye’s feet, plus his wallet and phone. About 20 minutes later, at the 7-Eleven in the 3100 block of Lockheed Boulevard, Cochran demanded that a stranger give him a ride. The man refused, and Cochran shot him in the face, prosecutors said.
Officers found Cochran in the parking lot of a nearby Taco Bell with a gun.
Cochran apologized in court Thursday, saying “There are not enough words in the English language to express how sorry I am for what occurred. I lost a friend I considered a brother.”
The judge, saying the police video shows Cochran is a “major danger” to the community, ordered the stiffest penalty.
Northern Virginia
Northern Virginia news, events and updates
“To me, it’s a sense of justice has been served,” said Leigh-Gaye’s father, Kebba Gaye.
“It doesn’t bring my son back, but it’s just, I’m relieved,” said his mother, Karen Leigh. “But it’s still, I still have the pain in my heart and it’s just always going to be there.”
Leigh-Gaye’s parents say from the time he was a child, their son was outgoing and kind-hearted.
“Everyone he touched or became friends with, they were like glue to him,” his father said.
‘These are my first two bodies’
Police video captured Cochran's disturbing conversation with an officer after the shooting.
“You just murdered someone,” the officer said.
“Two people! Two people! You hear me? Two!” Cochran screamed.
He seemed to believe he had killed both men he shot.
“I finally killed somebody,” he said. “These are my first two bodies.”
“I killed two (racial slur). I proved what I had to prove,” he later added.
He rapped for police and said he was anxious about being jailed.
“I’m honestly scared,” he said on video. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. This is my first time going to the big boy jail.”
“It still haunts me to this day having to look at that video,” Karen Leigh told News4 Thursday.
Leigh-Gaye had recently graduated from Mount Vernon High School, where he played on the football team.
His father testified that just two days before the shooting, his son brought Cochran home and asked if he could stay for a few days after he was kicked out of his own home. When the father learned Cochran had a gun, he asked him to leave.
The fatal gunfire came the next day.
“Everything that we worked hard for to get Kebbren straight, but he had, you know, his kindness end up killing him,” Leigh-Gaye’s father said.
Cochran’s defense
Cochran’s defense attorneys tried to convince jurors that he fired in self-defense and was afraid after the fistfight.
"Without malice, there is no murder … When you’ve been beat up in a bus stop by a guy you thought was your friend, your mind is not in a state of reason,” an attorney said.
But the prosecutor pushed back, saying, "A reasonable person does not bring out a gun just because they lost a fistfight."
News4 sends breaking news stories by email. Go here to sign up to get breaking news alerts in your inbox.
Prosecutors also pointed to something else Cochran said on video: "I've been geeking to click that joint all day, and I finally killed somebody.”
Prosecutors said the comment shows that the crime was premeditated, with prosecutor Stephen Eubank telling jurors, "Jordan Cochran was looking for a reason to use that gun and within course of a half-hour, he found two of them."
Cochran will be eligible for parole at age 60. The judge told him the keys to his release are in his hands.
