In the predawn hours of October 17, 2010, a house party on Scotia Drive in Chesapeake turned from noise and laughter into panic when gunfire erupted outside the home. Police were dispatched around 3:45 a.m. to the 4000 block, where they found Leo D. “Lil L” Askew, a 23-year-old male, suffering from gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene, leaving behind a family and a community that knew him as a 2005 graduate of Oscar Smith High School.
As the scene unfolded, investigators identified a second victim, Dimitri B. McNeil, who was also shot and killed that night. The violence didn’t end with the two deaths: three other people were hurt in the same burst of gunfire, turning what had been a gathering into a mass of sirens, fear, and unanswered questions about who pulled the trigger and why.
In the days and years that followed, the case settled into a painful kind of limbo. Reports marking the second anniversary described the shooter as still at large, and no public updates from that coverage indicated an arrest, named suspect, or charges tied to the killings. The story, instead, became one of persistence—of detectives continuing to work leads and of loved ones forced to measure time by anniversaries rather than by resolutions.
Chesapeake’s own cold-case listings continue to place the killings at 4004 Scotia Drive and classify the cause of death as gunshot, keeping the case officially alive even as years pass. The department’s cold-case information emphasizes that tips can be provided anonymously through the city’s reporting channels, a reminder that investigators still believe someone out there knows what happened in the early morning darkness on Scotia Drive—and that one piece of information could finally turn the night’s chaos into a clear path toward accountability.
