stop dead

Meanings

verbstop dead (third-person singular simple present stops dead, present participle stopping dead, simple past and past participle stopped dead)

present singular third person stops dead · participle present stopping dead · participle past stopped dead · past stopped dead

idiomaticintransitiveTo stop suddenly.
1 more example
At the height of the crisis, according to a retired SAC wing commander, SAC airborne alert bombers deliberately flew past their turnaround points toward Soviet airspace, an unambiguous threat which Soviet radar operators would certainly have recognized and reported. "I knew what my target was," the SAC general adds: "Leningrad." The bombers only turned around when the Soviet freighters carrying missiles to Cuba stopped dead in the Atlantic.
1995, Richard Rhodes, “Scorpions in a Bottle”, in Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 575