A man who stabbed his wife roughly 11 times while she held their 1-year-old daughter outside Pentagon City mall has been sentenced to 30 years in prison, closing out a case that turned into a flashpoint for Arlington's criminal justice politics. Leonardo Antonio Reyes was sentenced in Arlington County to 40 years for second-degree murder with 15 years suspended, plus 20 years for aggravated malicious wounding with 15 years suspended, followed by 10 years of probation.
The attack unfolded on Dec. 14, 2024, near 900 Army Navy Drive, according to ARLnow. Immediately before turning on his wife, Reyes had hugged a random stranger and chased that person down a sidewalk near Army Navy Drive and S. Joyce Street; when his wife, 26-year-old Iman Gaye, pursued him, he turned and stabbed her while she was holding their daughter, court records show. A bystander at the scene kicked the knife away from Reyes after the attack, and he briefly lay beside the victims before fleeing on foot into a nearby mall parking garage.
Police officers found Reyes hiding under a parked car in the garage, and he was taken into custody after a struggle involving a K9 unit, with blood on his person. Investigators later recovered surveillance footage and other evidence tying him to the attack. Reyes initially told police he had witnessed his wife being stabbed by someone who “looked like me” and claimed he fled because he was scared, though he later made statements taking responsibility for the attack during interrogation, according to the prosecutor's office.
A Family Torn Apart
Gaye was hospitalized for more than two weeks before she died on Dec. 30, 2024. The D.C. Medical Examiner's Office ruled her death a homicide caused by complications from multiple sharp-force injuries. The couple's 1-year-old daughter needed emergency surgery for multiple stab wounds and internal injuries but survived; the couple's 3-year-old child witnessed the attack but was not physically hurt.
Arlington County Commonwealth's Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti said the violence took a mother's life and left a young child with serious physical and emotional trauma. She said the case resolution, reached when Reyes pleaded guilty in April to second-degree murder and aggravated malicious wounding, spared surviving family members the burden of a lengthy trial.
Psychosis, PCP and the Limits of an Insanity Defense
A psychological evaluation found that Reyes was experiencing psychosis at the time of the attack and had a documented history of bipolar disorder. The same evaluation noted he had stopped taking his prescribed medication and had reportedly used PCP in the days before the stabbing.
That combination proved legally decisive. Under Virginia law, drug use alone cannot support an insanity defense, and when psychiatric illness and drug use are both involved, the illness must be shown as the clear cause of the criminal behavior. Virginia law does not allow a finding of not guilty by reason of insanity when the cause of the behavior is unclear, according to the same report, which effectively foreclosed that path for Reyes despite his documented psychosis.
Under Virginia Code § 18.2-32, second-degree murder carries a statutory penalty of 5 to 40 years in prison, meaning the 40-year term handed down before the 15-year suspension represented the maximum allowed for that count, per FindLaw.
A Prior Plea Deal That Sparked Political Fallout
At the time of the attack, Reyes was on probation stemming from a 2021 attempted robbery at a Crystal City CVS, in which he pointed a blank-firing replica handgun at a clerk. Prosecutors had dropped gun and drug charges in that case and granted a deferred disposition with a 1.5-year jail term; Reyes was 19 at the time and told authorities he committed the robbery after losing two jobs.
Arlington's police union called that prior plea deal too lenient, with Arlington Coalition of Police president Randall Mason describing a deferred disposition for an armed robbery involving multiple victims as “pretty unheard of.” Dehghani-Tafti rejected that characterization, saying the sentence fell within state guidelines.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican, criticized the handling of Reyes's prior case, accusing reform-minded prosecutors of putting violent criminals first. The Arlington GOP has since set its sights on the 2027 Commonwealth's Attorney race, a notable shift after Republicans had not fielded a candidate for the seat in decades — part of a broader wave of GOP scrutiny of Dehghani-Tafti's office that has continued into this year.
Case Closes Amid Broader Crime Decline
The sentencing comes as Arlington County's overall crime picture has shifted. According to the Arlington County Police Department's 2025 Annual Report, serious crime in the county dropped 10.9% in 2025, marking the area's first annual decline since 2018, with property crimes and motor vehicle thefts driving most of the decrease.
For the family Reyes shattered, that broader trend offers little comfort. Gaye's death and her daughter's survival after emergency surgery remain the human cost behind a case that consumed Arlington's legal and political attention for more than a year, from the night of the stabbing through Reyes's guilty plea and now his 30-year active sentence.
