Va. man who stabbed Target co-worker sentenced to 100 years in prison
A Fairfax County man was sentenced to 100 years in prison Tuesday for fatally stabbing a Target co-worker in a parking lot at the store in the Baileys Crossroads area.
Bazen Berhe, 25, pleaded guilty in October to first-degree murder in the April 17, 2021, killing of Hernan Leiva, 58, in what Berhe described to a judge as a fit of rage. Authorities said Berhe, then 22, attacked Leiva with knives and a hammer when the victim arrived at work that morning.
In an unusual statement to Judge Robert J. Smith in Fairfax Circuit Court, Berhe pleaded for a stiff sentence and promised he would behave behind bars while serving a maximum term. “I promise, your honor, I won’t kill someone again,” he said. “I will not stab someone.”
Berhe, who is from Ethiopia, said he was in a “state of absolute anger” before the killing because he was having trouble with immigration authorities. When he realized that he would not be able to legally stay in the United States, Berhe said, he became enraged. Three days before the killing, Leiva, a janitor at Target, ate Berhe’s lunch out of the office refrigerator, which made him mad. The next day, Berhe purchased the hammer and two knives and began “training for the murder,” officials said.
About 3:30 a.m., in the parking garage at the 5100 block of Leesburg Pike, police found Leiva, of Falls Church, suffering from apparent stab wounds, officials have said. Berhe said in court Tuesday that he had entered the garage about an hour earlier and stood behind a staircase, lying in wait to kill the first person who appeared. When Leiva came down the stairs on his way to work that morning, Berhe said, he bludgeoned him with a hammer and then stabbed him.
Berhe apologized to Leiva’s family, saying he “would have stabbed anyone” and that the slaying was not personal to Leiva. “Even a 4-year-old kid,” he said. “If anyone had gone down the steps first, I would have killed them.”
Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano (D) said the sentence was warranted. “In this case, because of the unique and self-proclaimed danger the defendant continues to pose to the community, today’s sentence was a necessary outcome for maintaining public safety,” he said in a statement.
Brandon Sloane, Berhe’s attorney, asked the judge to be compassionate when giving the sentence and to take into consideration the incident’s nuances beyond the “wanton violence that is on the face of the case.” But after Berhe asked for a lengthy sentence, the judge obliged.
“There was somewhat of an expression of remorse,” Smith said. “But I think it’s hollow.”
In the courtroom on Tuesday, about 15 members of Leiva’s family were watching. They patted one another’s backs and squeezed their hands together as Berhe spoke for more than 20 minutes. As the hearing came to an end, some family members wiped away tears.
“There is no denying that it was very gruesome and grotesque, how I killed that man,” Berhe said. “But I want the family to know, I did everything in my power to kill him in less than a minute.”
“Well, that makes it fine,” one of Leiva’s relatives responded sarcastically, then sighed and shook his head, looking down.
