12/10/2022
Austin Lee Edwards, who posed as a 17-year-old boy online to solicit nude photographs from the teen, killed himself with during a shootout with San Bernardino sheriff’s deputies in late November.
“Detectives determined the gun used was Edwards’ department-issued semi-automatic service pistol,” the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said Friday in an email to the Los Angeles Times.
Edwards traveled across the country from Virginia to the Riverside home of the teen. After shooting the girl’s mom and grandparents dead, authorities said he set fire to her home and drove off with the girl, eventually killing himself.
Virginia State Police said this week that Edward’s hiring was the result of “human error” after it was revealed that he had been detained in 2016 for a psychiatric evaluation over threats to kill his father and himself.
Deputies fired on him as the girl escaped safely. It was then that Edwards killed himself.
“Detectives determined the gun used was Edwards’ department-issued semi-automatic service pistol,” sheriff’s spokeswoman Gloria Huerta said Friday.
Edwards had been employed by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office for less than two weeks at the time of the Riverside attacks. He had graduated from the Virginia State Police Academy on Jan. 21, 2022, and resigned from that department on Oct. 28.
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