In the early hours of a January morning in Virginia Beach, a tragic altercation outside a nightclub claimed the life of Mark T. Vanhorn, a 24-year-old male. Vanhorn, a sonar technician in the United States Navy who was originally from Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania, was working as a bouncer at Ocean's Cabaret on the night of January 15, 2007.
Just after 1 a.m., a minor disturbance inside the club led to two men, Charles Lorenzo Butler and Steven Alexander Breaux, being asked to leave.
Once outside, the situation escalated dramatically when Butler and Breaux allegedly opened fire. Both Vanhorn and another man, 26-year-old Michael T. Porter from California, were fatally shot. An off-duty Portsmouth deputy sheriff, Hector Diaz, who attempted to intervene, was also fired upon but was not injured.
The response from law enforcement was swift. A police dog tracked Butler, then 23, and Breaux, 21, to a nearby ditch where they were found hiding. Both men were taken into custody and subsequently faced serious charges, including two counts of murder, one count of attempted capital murder, and three counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony. The violent incident and the involvement of a service member drew significant attention in the community.
