NEW After hearing thousands of last words, this hospital chaplain has advice for the living
Hospital chaplain J.S. Park opens up about death, grief and hearing thousands of last words, and shares his advice for the living.
A Virginia sheriff's deputy posed as a 17-year-old boy online and asked a teenage California girl for nude photos before he drove across the country and killed her mother and grandparents and set fire to their home, authorities said Wednesday.
Austin Lee Edwards, 28, died by suicide Friday during a shootout with San Bernardino sheriff's deputies. The 15-year-old girl from Riverside, California, was rescued and is in counselling for trauma, family members and police said at a news conference Wednesday.
Edwards, a resident of North Chesterfield, Virginia, appears to have posed as a teenager online to engage in a romantic relationship with the girl and obtain her personal information by deceiving her with a false identity, known as "catfishing," police said.
Authorities did not provide additional details about their communications and said they still need to comb through online accounts. Officials are looking into whether he victimized other minors across the country.
It's also unclear whether this was the girl's first in-person encounter with Edwards or whether she was aware that he was coming to California, officials said.
Riverside Police Chief Larry Gonzalez said that because of the girl's young age and trauma it will take time to complete their interviews with her and get answers to the many questions surrounding the case, such as whether she was coerced or threatened into leaving with him.
"We don't believe at this point she had anything to do with the murders," he said.
At some point, Edwards asked the girl for sexual photos and she stopped communicating with him, Gonzalez said, but detectives don't yet know when that happened or whether Edwards killed her family in retaliation.
Authorities believe Edwards parked his vehicle in a neighbour's driveway, walked to the home and killed the family members before leaving with the girl on Friday. Officials have not yet determined how he entered the home, killed the victims or set the fire.
The bodies found in the Riverside home – about 50 miles (80 kilometres) southeast of downtown Los Angeles in a suburban neighbourhood of single-family homes where the loud rush of freeway traffic can be heard – were identified as the girl's grandparents and mother: Mark Winek, 69; Sharie Winek, 65; and their 38-year-old daughter, Brooke Winek.
"Nobody could imagine this crime happening to my family, to our family," said Michelle Blandin, Mark and Sharie's daughter and Brooke's sister.
A tearful Blandin said her parents and sister "lived and loved selflessly." The killing of Brooke, a single parent, means that her daughters – the 15-year-old girl and her 13-year-old sister – are now motherless, Blandin said.
A front window of the charred home in the Riverside cul-de-sac was boarded up Wednesday with a wooden cross. Dozens of candles had been laid on the sidewalk, along with bouquets of flowers and stuffed animals.
Edwards is a former Virginia state trooper and was a sheriff's deputy in Washington County, Virginia, at the time of the killings. The law enforcement agencies there said he did not show any concerning behaviours and no other employers disclosed any issues during background checks. Virginia State Police are conducting an internal review of his hiring process and tenure there.
Gonzalez called it "disgusting really" to see someone in law enforcement involved in such heinous crimes and wondered how he had been hired at two Virginia agencies.
"How did this person get past a background investigation? How this person get past a polygraph investigation?" the chief said. "From what we understand so far about him, there's really not a big rap sheet on this person or anything that would indicate that they can see that outcome."
Police are also looking into whether Edwards used his law enforcement weapon or government-issued laptop in the crimes.
A neighbour on Friday called police to report Edwards' red Kia Soul as a suspicious car and said the girl appeared to be in distress and involved in a disturbance with a man, Gonzalez said.
Police were able to run the vehicle's license plate and discovered that Edwards had filed a police report earlier this year regarding vandalism to the Kia, the chief said. The police report had Edwards' cellphone number in it, which allowed investigators to ping his phone and quickly locate him in Southern California.
He got into a gun battle with San Bernardino sheriff's deputies and died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the coroner's office said Wednesday.
Blandin said she last saw her parents and sister on Thanksgiving, the day before they were slain.
"We had a family debate, and it got heated, on if the brownies my mom made should be frosted with sprinkles or just left plain," she said. "Little did I know, on that day, that would be the last time that my husband and I would see my parents and my sister again."
Blandin begged parents and guardians to use her family's tragedy to start conversations about internet safety.
"When you are talking to your children about the dangers of their online actions, please use us as a reference," she said. "Tell our story to help your parenting. Not out of fear, but out of an example of something that did happen."
----
This story has been corrected to attribute a quote to Riverside Police Chief Larry Gonzalez. It was incorrectly attributed to Riverside Police Officer Ryan Railsback.
----
Dazio reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press Writer Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Virginia, contributed.
This story has been corrected to attribute a quote to Riverside Police Chief Larry Gonzalez. It was incorrectly attributed to Riverside Police Officer Ryan Railsback.
Hospital chaplain J.S. Park opens up about death, grief and hearing thousands of last words, and shares his advice for the living.
French police cordoned off the Iranian consulate in Paris on Friday, where a man was threatening to blow himself up, Europe 1 radio and BFM TV.
More money will land in the pockets of some Canadian families on Friday for the latest Canada Child Benefit installment.
An apparent Israeli drone attack on Iran saw troops fire air defences at a major air base and a nuclear site early Friday morning near the central city of Isfahan, an assault coming in retaliation for Tehran's unprecedented drone-and-missile assault on the country.
American millionaire Jonathan Lehrer, one of two men charged in the killings of a Canadian couple in Dominica, has been denied bail.
Canadian banks that refuse to identify the carbon rebate by name when doing direct deposits are forcing the government to change the law to make them do it, says Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault.
A woman who recently moved to Canada from India was searching for a job when she got caught in an online job scam and lost $15,000.
The World Health Organization and around 500 experts have agreed for the first time on what it means for a disease to spread through the air, in a bid to avoid the confusion early in the COVID-19 pandemic that some scientists have said cost lives.
Prince Harry, the son of King Charles III and fifth in line to the British throne, has formally confirmed he is now a U.S. resident.
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a grade four student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.
When Les Robertson was walking home from the gym in North Vancouver's Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood three weeks ago, he did a double take. Standing near a burrow it had dug in a vacant lot near East 1st Street and St. Georges Avenue was a yellow-bellied marmot.
A moulting seal who was relocated after drawing daily crowds of onlookers in Greater Victoria has made a surprise return, after what officials described as an 'astonishing' six-day journey.
Just steps from Parliament Hill is a barber shop that for the last 100 years has catered to everyone from prime ministers to tourists.
A high score on a Foo Fighters pinball machine has Edmonton player Dave Formenti on a high.
A compound used to treat sour gas that's been linked to fertility issues in cattle has been found throughout groundwater in the Prairies, according to a new study.