Virginia police now say their background check should have flagged Austin Lee Edwards, who later killed three family members of a Riverside teen he 'catfished.'
Virginia State Police now blame “human error” for the agency’s hiring of Austin Lee Edwards, the cop who killed the grandparents and mother of a 15-year-old California girl he ““Human error resulted in an incomplete database query during Edwards’ hiring process,” Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said in a news release Wednesday.first reported
In a statement to The Times, Geller said the Virginia State Police would not have hired any officer candidate who it knew had been detained under an emergency custody order and a temporary detention order.either order. Geller declined to comment on the specific circumstances surrounding Edwards’ custody and detention orders, saying the department was barred by law from discussing confidential records, despite those records being made public on Tuesday by a Washington County judge in response to a motion filed by The Times.
Riverside police said that Edwards, 28, portrayed himself as a 17-year-old while communicating with the girl online. In November, he drove across the country to her Riverside home and killed her family before setting fire to the home and leaving with the girl.
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