Officials said Austin Lee Edwards shot himself with his government-issued firearm during a shootout with San Bernardino County deputies.
The Riverside Police Department, which is investigating the deaths of the girl’s family members, has not said how they were killed.
Edwards, a resident of North Chesterfield, Virginia, appears to have posed online as a 17-year-old boy 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 said the girl stopped communicating with him after he asked her to send him nude photos of herself.
Edwards was a former Virginia state trooper and was a sheriff’s deputy in Washington County, Virginia, at the time of the killings.about Edwards before he was hired. But a police report from the Abingdon Police Department in Virginia shows he was detained in 2016 for a psychiatric evaluation over threats to kill himself and his father, years before he joined law enforcement.
On Thursday — a day after the Los Angeles Times broke the news about the mental health episode — the Virginia State Police said a recently completed review showed "human error" resulted in an incomplete database query during the hiring process.DAILY NEWSLETTERthat I have read and agree
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