Leesburg Man's Cocaine Overdose Death Leads to Guilty Plea

A Luray man pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court to tampering with evidence last year when he moved the body of a drug overdose victim in an Ashburn hotel.

Jason Gregory Colley, 36, admitted in U.S. District Court in Alexandria that he sold cocaine to Jason Laytham, 37, of Leesburg, and another unnamed individual at the extended stay hotel, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Laytham later died of an overdose of cocaine and other substances.

Colley was charged on April 2 and faces up to 20 years in prison when he’s sentenced on Oct. 16, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. The case was investigated by the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office and the Washington Field Division of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

In the Sept. 12 incident, Colley stated in his plea agreement that after he sold them the cocaine, Laytham and the other individual became unconscious. Colley dragged Laytham’s body out of the hotel suite (which Colley had rented using his own name) into a common area of the hotel before calling for paramedics.

When rescue personnel and Loudoun County sheriff’s deputies arrived, the other individual was found unconscious in Colley’s hotel suite. The other individual survived, but Laytham died from the adverse effects of the cocaine and the other substances, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.