On a Tuesday morning in February, the quiet routine of a Locust Grove, Virginia, laundromat was shattered by an act of premeditated violence that ended the life of 24-year-old Alistair C. Smith. The young man, a shift manager at a local Sheetz and a father, was simply waiting for his laundry to dry when his life was cut tragically short.
Earlier that morning, on February 13, 2018, Smith had placed his clothes in a dryer and left, returning shortly before 9:00 a.m.
to sit and wait, engrossed in his cell phone. Unbeknownst to him, he was being watched. Another man, Gregory Humphries, had followed Smith to the laundromat and peered at him through the window. Humphries then retrieved a bolt-action rifle from his vehicle, entered the establishment, and from a distance of about seven feet, fired a single, devastating shot. The force of the large-caliber bullet propelled Smith from his chair and onto the floor. Humphries then walked around a table and shot Smith twice more in the head before calmly returning to his car and driving away. His horrific actions were captured in a chilling sixteen-second surveillance video.
The gruesome scene was discovered approximately twenty minutes later by two women who had come to use the laundromat. The Orange County Sheriff's Office was alerted, and an investigation was swiftly launched. The clarity of the surveillance footage and witness information led authorities to identify Gregory Humphries as the suspect. He was taken into custody later that same day.
During legal proceedings, Humphries entered a plea of guilty to the charges brought against him. He admitted to following Smith to the laundromat with the intention of confronting him, though he claimed the initial shot was unintentional, stating the rifle 'went off' as he leveled it. However, after the first shot, he resolved to carry out his deadly intention. During his allocution, Humphries mentioned instances where he believed Smith had been at his house at night. In court, the Commonwealth's attorney presented the harrowing surveillance video and graphic photographs of the crime scene, emphasizing the cold and calculated nature of the murder. The court, after a thorough colloquy to ensure the plea was entered freely and voluntarily, accepted Humphries's guilty plea. He was subsequently sentenced to a lengthy prison term, the maximum allowed under the plea agreement, which fell within the high end of the discretionary sentencing guidelines.
