California lieutenant shoots himself

A Virginia sheriff’s deputy went to California to kill three family members of a 15-year-old girl who tried to sexually coerce her online, then killed herself with a government-issued firearm, officials said Saturday. said to

Authorities say 28-year-old Austin Lee Edwards drove across the country, killed the girl’s mother and grandparents on November 25, and set fire to his Riverside home, about 50 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. rice field.

That same day, Edwards committed suicide in a shootout with a San Bernardino sheriff’s deputy. A teenage girl was rescued.

“Our detectives have determined that the gun used was an Edwards Department-issued semi-automatic service pistol,” sheriff’s spokeswoman Gloria Huerta said in a statement.

The Riverside Police Department, which is investigating the deaths of the girl’s family, has not disclosed how they were killed.

Edwards, who lives in North Chesterfield, Virginia, Appears to have posed as a 17-year-old boy online Police said they engaged in “catfish phishing”, in which the girl became romantically involved and tricked her into obtaining personal information by impersonating her.

Authorities said they cut contact with him after the girl asked him to send nude photos of himself.

Edwards is a former Virginia state police officer and sheriff’s deputy for Washington County, Virginia at the time of the killing.

Both law enforcement agencies say they found no warning signs before Edwards was hired. Police report from Abingdon, Virginia Police Department It shows that he was detained for psychiatric evaluation in 2016, years before he joined law enforcement, for threatening to kill himself and his father.

On Thursday, a day after the Los Angeles Times broke the news of the mental health issue, the Virginia State Police said in a recently completed investigation that “human error” during the hiring process caused incomplete database queries. said it turned out.

The Washington County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to calls seeking comment on the 2016 episode.