diff --git a/awsagentprovider/src/main/java/software/amazon/opentelemetry/javaagent/providers/AwsMetricAttributeGenerator.java b/awsagentprovider/src/main/java/software/amazon/opentelemetry/javaagent/providers/AwsMetricAttributeGenerator.java
index f612435032..68ba1bc824 100644
--- a/awsagentprovider/src/main/java/software/amazon/opentelemetry/javaagent/providers/AwsMetricAttributeGenerator.java
+++ b/awsagentprovider/src/main/java/software/amazon/opentelemetry/javaagent/providers/AwsMetricAttributeGenerator.java
@@ -640,7 +640,7 @@ private static String getDBStatementRemoteOperation(
 
     // Remove all whitespace and newline characters from the beginning of remote_operation
     // and retrieve the first MAX_KEYWORD_LENGTH characters
-    remoteOperation = remoteOperation.stripLeading();
+    remoteOperation = remoteOperation.replaceFirst("^\\s+", "");
     if (remoteOperation.length() > MAX_KEYWORD_LENGTH) {
       remoteOperation = remoteOperation.substring(0, MAX_KEYWORD_LENGTH);
     }