Navy veteran gets life in prison for 2017 stalking and shooting case

A man already convicted of possessing child pornography has been sentenced to life in prison for shooting a fellow military veteran nearly seven years ago.

Jaeyoung Lee was sentenced to life, plus 48 years in prison for shooting Jeremy Tammone on Oct. 21, 2017, leaving him permanently injured, Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano announced Friday (Jan. 26).

Lee, who served in the U.S. Navy for seven years, waited outside Tammone’s apartment in the Franconia District and shot him three times after he answered the door, according to the commonwealth’s attorney’s office.

Tammone is a 50-year-old Army and Marine veteran who was working at that time as a Defense Department contractor, according to an NBC4 report. He was also a friend of a woman who had recently broken up with Lee.

According to prosecutors, Lee had spent months stalking his ex-girlfriend, including by “hacking her social media accounts to monitor her messages, installing cameras in her home, and making copies of her apartment door locks to practice unlocking them.”

Police quickly identified Lee as a suspect in Tammone’s shooting, per NBC4, but his arrest didn’t come until Jan. 9, 2018 after detectives found a device with child pornography images and videos during a search of Lee’s apartment in the “Alexandria section” of Fairfax County.

Initially charged with 20 counts of child porn possession, Lee was ultimately convicted on 100 counts in January 2020, according to Descano’s office. The conviction was appealed and sustained by a three-judge panel in July 2021.

In that case, Lee was sentenced on June 12, 2020 to a total of 20 years in prison — one year for each of the 100 charges, with 80 of them running concurrently instead of consecutively — but 15 years were suspended, giving him five years of active jail time, a spokesperson for the commonwealth’s attorney’s office says.

For the shooting, prosecutors pushed for a life sentence because they believe Lee’s “actions indicate that he remains a serious danger to the community,” Descano said. Lee was convicted of seven felonies in a May 2023 trial.

“Over a period of months, he planned and calculated, committing multiple felonies as he stalked his ex-girlfriend,” Descano said. “This period of dangerous obsession culminated in one of the worst possible outcomes: a victim’s life permanently destroyed.”

Tammone continues to suffer from the brain and organ damage he sustained from the shooting, which left him unable to eat or drink, NBC4 reported. He and his family told the news station that they felt Lee’s sentencing was an “appropriate close of…this horrific chapter” of their lives.

In addition to the life sentence for aggravated malicious wounding, Lee received three years for using a firearm in a felony, 20 years for malicious computer trespassing, 10 years for possessing burglary tools, and five years each for wiretapping and two counts of using a computer to obtain personal information, per Descano’s office.

“Individuals who pose this kind of danger receive sentences that first and foremost keep the community safe,” Descano said. “I’m grateful to the detectives and prosecutors who helped bring this case through to the end, and I hope that closing the book today brings a measure of justice the victims and their families.”

The commonwealth’s attorney’s office also announced a life-in-prison sentence on Friday for McLean resident Megan Hargan, who shot and killed her mother and sister on July 14, 2017.