Two Arlington attorneys are suing a Virginia sheriff’s office over a brutal triple homicide carried out by a deputy who, court documents allege, was hired illegally.
The deputy, 28-year-old Austin Edwards, reportedly lied about his age while soliciting sexual photos from a 15-year-old girl in California in 2022. When the teen rejected Edwards’ advances, he drove to California, claimed authority as a deputy to gain entry into a home and killed her mother and grandparents, according to legal filings.
After setting the house ablaze, Edwards, per lawsuits filed earlier this month, kidnapped the teenager and fled. He died during a shootout with law enforcement in the Mojave Desert that same day.
Ballston-based attorneys Scott Perry and Nicholas Stamatis and Virginia Beach attorneys Kevin Biniazan and Jeffrey Breit, of the firm Breit Biniazan, are suing the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in federal court on behalf of the teenage victim and the administrator of her mother’s estate.
The suits condemn the law enforcement agency, located in a Virginia county about two hours from Knoxville, Tenn., for its alleged liability in the killings.
The filings accuse the sheriff’s office of failing to conduct a complete background check on Edwards which, attorneys say, would have revealed that he had been barred from owning a gun after threatening to kill his father in 2016.
Perry hopes these lawsuits — which name the Washington County sheriff, a detective and the administrator of Edwards’ estate in addition to the sheriff’s office — bring some amount of justice for his clients. He told ARLnow that he sees them as victims not only of Edwards but of everyone who should have stopped him from becoming a sheriff’s deputy.
“Without a badge and without a gun, and without being able to say he was an officer, this wouldn’t have happened,” the attorney said.
The two nearly identical lawsuits, representing the teen and the mother’s estate, each seek $50 million in damages.
The Washington County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to a request for comment. In response to a similar lawsuit filed on behalf of the teenager’s aunt and sister in November, the agency pointed out that Edwards had been employed with the Virginia State Police immediately before the sheriff’s office hired him.
“As a matter of law, it is neither unreasonable nor negligent for the WCSO to rely on the verification processes of the Virginia State Police in hiring Edwards,” the sheriff’s office said in a motion to dismiss.
Hired because of ‘human error’
Edwards, according to court documents, found his teenage victim through Instagram in the summer of 2022. As part of a “catfishing” scheme, he posed as a 17-year-old, reportedly sent her gifts and money, paid for food deliveries and helped her buy birthday gifts for her friends.
The victim broke off their relationship that November after Edwards allegedly began trying to make her to send nude photos.
It was around this point that Edwards applied to be a sheriff’s deputy.
The Washington County Sheriff’s Office, according to the suit, hired Edwards despite the fact that he left “significant portions” of his employment application blank. This included questions about whether he had ever been detained or had his weapons permit revoked.
In reality, the Los Angeles Times reported, a judge had revoked Edwards’ right to own a firearm after he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility in 2016.
Neither the sheriff’s office nor state police noted that fact — a failing that a Virginia State Police spokesperson blamed on “human error,” according to the Associated Press.
“All of this information was easily discoverable by the sheriff’s office, had they looked at it,” Perry said.
Nine days after Edwards left state police to join the sheriff’s office, he drove across the country to Riverside, Calif., where the teenager’s grandparents lived.
Court documents allege that the deputy posed as a detective investigating lewd photos sent between the teenager and a peer. Once he gained entry to the home, Edwards is accused of forcing the grandparents to call the teen’s mother and lure her to the house, then tying all three up with duct tape and killing them.
The teenager, who had driven with her mother to the home but was left in the car, eventually entered the house and was grabbed by Edwards, who then used a canister of gasoline to set fire to the home, plaintiff’s attorneys say.
He abducted the teen and started driving back to Virginia but was soon tracked by police, leading to a high speed chase. He died by suicide during a shootout with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.
Legal significance
Perry hopes that the lawsuits drive home the importance of due diligence when hiring law enforcement officers.
“The issue is, he was able to present himself as this person of authority, and that is just such a serious thing in our society,” the attorney said. “I can’t imagine — I don’t know about you — but I can’t imagine telling an officer, ‘No, I’m not going to talk to you right now,’ if he or she presents themselves appropriately.”
He also hopes this serves as a wake up call to parents about the dangers of catfishing and online predators.
The legal implications of allowing a mentally unstable person access to a firearm stepped into the national spotlight last week with the conviction of Jennifer Crumbley. In a jury decision, the Michigan woman was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for failing to properly secure a gun that her 15-year-old son used to kill four students in a school shooting.
Perry believes those in authority must reckon with the responsibility that comes with letting someone to use a gun.
“Regardless of one’s view on gun control,” he said, “what we can say is that we can’t have guns in the hands of the wrong people.”