RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — A Virginia sheriff’s deputy who police say traveled to California to kill three members of the family of a 15-year-old woman he tried to sexually extort on-line killed himself with a government-issued firearm, authorities mentioned Saturday.
Austin Lee Edwards, 28, drove throughout the nation and on Nov. 25 killed the woman’s mom and grandparents and set fireplace to their house in Riverside, a metropolis about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of downtown Los Angeles, authorities mentioned.
That identical day, Edwards died by suicide throughout a shootout with San Bernardino sheriff’s deputies. The teenage woman was rescued.
“Our detectives determined the gun used was Edwards’ department-issued semi-automatic service pistol,” sheriff’s spokeswoman Gloria Huerta mentioned in an announcement.
The Riverside Police Department, which is investigating the deaths of the woman’s members of the family, has not mentioned how they had been killed.
Edwards, a resident of North Chesterfield, Virginia, seems to have posed on-line as a 17-year-old boy to interact in a romantic relationship with the woman and acquire her private information by deceiving her with a false id, often known as “catfishing,” police mentioned.
Authorities mentioned the woman stopped speaking with him after he requested her to ship him nude photographs of herself.
Edwards was a former Virginia state trooper and was a sheriff’s deputy in Washington County, Virginia, on the time of the killings.
Both regulation enforcement companies have mentioned they discovered no warning indicators about Edwards earlier than he was employed. But a police report from the Abingdon Police Department in Virginia reveals he was detained in 2016 for a psychiatric analysis over threats to kill himself and his father, years earlier than he joined regulation enforcement.
On Thursday — a day after the Los Angeles Times broke the news concerning the psychological well being episode — the Virginia State Police mentioned a not too long ago accomplished assessment confirmed “human error” resulted in an incomplete database question throughout the hiring course of.
The Washington County Sheriff’s Office didn’t reply to calls looking for touch upon the 2016 episode.