Lonnie Weeks was executed by the State of Virginia for the murder of State Trooper Jose Cavazos
According to court documents Lonnie Weeks was a passenger in a vehicle that was pulled over by State Trooper Jose Cavazos. Weeks would get out of the vehicle and open fire on the Officer killing him
Lonnie Weeks would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Lonnie Weeks would be executed by lethal injection on March 16 2000
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When Was Lonnie Weeks Executed
Lonnie Weeks was executed on March 16 2000
Lonnie Weeks Case
The gun that killed a Virginia state trooper earlier this year had been used only weeks earlier in another slaying in North Carolina, a Prince William County prosecutor said yesterday.
Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney James Willitt said that Lonnie Weeks Jr., of Fayetteville, N.C., was hiding the 9mm Glock semiautomatic pistol when Trooper Jose M. Cavazos pulled him and a relative over during a traffic stop near Dale City on Feb. 24.
Weeks, 21, has been charged with capital murder in the state trooper’s slaying, and his trial on that charge began in Manassas yesterday. Few details of the earlier killing, for which Weeks has not been charged, were given to jurors during the prosecutor’s 15-minute opening statement.
“Trooper Cavazos was a busy man,” Willitt told the jury of nine women and four men. “He was busy with his duties as a state trooper, as a father to two children and as a husband. But Lonnie Weeks was also busy. In North Carolina, he was burglarizing a home in which several items were taken, including a car.”
But it was because of that stolen car, defense attorney Daniel Morissette told jurors, that Weeks “had reason to be afraid” when he shot Cavazos, an eight-year member of the force who was called “Poppa” by colleagues.
In a short opening statement and in the line of questioning that defense attorneys presented in choosing the jury, Morissette suggested that though Weeks might be guilty of murder, he is not guilty of capital murder, which can carry the death penalty.
“He panicked. He did something that he deeply regrets,” Morissette said, noting that Weeks returned to the scene of the shooting “to see what he could do for Trooper Cavazos.”
According to Willitt, Weeks stole a 1987 Volkswagen Jetta and then drove to Washington to meet his uncle, Louis Dukes Jr., 21. Dukes has been charged with first-degree murder in Cavazos’s slaying. His trial is scheduled for Nov. 15.
The two men soon headed south on Interstate 95, Willitt said, “and it was at that time that fate caused {them} and Trooper Cavazos to meet.”
Cavazos, 50, a Persian Gulf War veteran, pulled the vehicle over shortly after midnight on a speeding violation, Willitt said. He told Dukes, who was driving the car, to step out and then ordered Weeks out of the passenger side.
Willitt said that after Cavazos issued a second order to Weeks, the defendant raised the hidden handgun and began firing, striking Cavazos at least five times. As Willitt described the shooting to jurors, the slain trooper’s wife, Linda, could be heard crying quietly in the back of the courtroom.
Weeks then took over the driving, but the two men abandoned the car about half a mile away, according to Willitt. He said that witnesses later saw Weeks near the trooper’s body. He did not try to render aid, but bent over and picked up a piece of paper, Willitt said. The paper remains a mystery, although Willitt suggested that it was some identification that would tie Weeks to the killing.
Before jury selection began yesterday morning, Weeks pleaded guilty before Circuit Court Judge Herman A. Whisenant Jr. to car theft and also to using a handgun in the commission of a felony.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul B. Ebert later said that he couldn’t understand how Weeks could be guilty of those two crimes without being guilty of the trooper’s murder. The pleas, he said, were not part of any plea bargain.