Virginia State Police officials admitted Wednesday, Dec. 7, that they botched the background check that allowed Austin Lee Edwards, the man who killed three members of a Riverside family in November, to enter the agency’s academy in 2021.

Edwards was taken in for a mental-health evaluation in 2016 after cutting himself, biting his father and threatening to kill himself and his father, according to an incident report written by the Abingdon Police Department.

Strapped to a stretcher, Edwards was taken first to a hospital, and then to a facility where patients can be given short-term treatment for a crisis. Virginia State Police, citing a state law regarding privacy, would not disclose how long Edwards was kept.

Edwards, in applying for the academy, did not disclose the incident that happened in a small town on Virginia’s southern border. And the report was not discovered during the background check because “human error resulted in an incomplete database query during Edwards’ hiring process,” Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said in a news release.

“Although we believe this to be an isolated incident, steps are currently underway to ensure the error is not repeated going forward,” she wrote in the release. “The department is also proactively auditing existing personnel records and practices.”

Read more

Search for answers in Riverside triple killing to focus on murky world of online predators
Suspect in Riverside triple-homicide was police officer for less than 1 year
Suspect in killings of 3 family members in Riverside had ‘catfished’ teen, police say
Riverside triple homicide suspect dead, authorities confirm
3 people found in burning Riverside house may have been murdered; suspect dead

Geller, in an interview, declined to elaborate on the error or say whether, had the report been discovered, that would have eliminated Edwards from consideration for the academy.

“We’re not going to do the what-ifs at this point,” she said.

Jim Bueermann, a policing consultant and former police chief in Redlands, said Wednesday that it’s difficult to tell from the Virginia State Police statement whether this was an error by one person or a flaw in the background-check system.

But the discovery of the report likely would have caused police to reject Edwards for the academy, he said.

“I don’t know what the standards are in Virginia, nor do I know what the standards would be in that agency,” Bueermann said. “Having said that, though, I think best practices are such that, yes, he would be disqualified in an agency that is very focused on hiring the right people and not the wrong people.”

“One of the most important decisions a sheriff or police chief makes is who they appoint a deputy sheriff or police officer,” he said. “It sounds like they are taking this very seriously and leads me to believe they would not have hired him had they known about it.”

Edwards graduated from the Virginia State Police Academy on Jan. 21, 2022, and passed written, psychological and physical testing, as well as a lie-detector test, before being hired by Virginia State Police, Geller said. Edwards resigned Oct. 28.

The Washington County Sheriff’s Office then hired Edwards on Nov. 16, and he was going through orientation before being assigned to the patrol division, the Sheriff’s Office said. No past employer disclosed any trouble, discipline or investigations during the background check, Washington County Sheriff Blake Andis has said.

No one at the Sheriff’s Office was available Wednesday to comment on the Virginia State Police statement or say whether it had performed its own background check that missed the police report on Edwards.

Related Articles

Edwards, 28, at some point developed an online relationship with a 15-year-old member of the Winek family by pretending to be a 17-year-old boy, said Riverside police, who described the ruse as “catfishing.” He drove across the country to meet her after she rebuffed his request for nude photos and on Nov. 25, went to her Price Court home. There, he killed her grandparents, 69-year-old Mark Winek and 65-year-old Sharie Winek, and her mother, Brooke Winek, 38, before setting the home ablaze.

Edwards drove away with the girl and later that day killed himself during a confrontation with San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies in the Mojave Desert.

The girl escaped during the encounter and was not physically harmed, police said.

Police have not disclosed how the Wineks were slain.

Mark Winek was a coach for baseball and softball for about a decade at Arlington High in Riverside.

No one can say how events surrounding the crime would have been altered had Edwards been disqualified from a career in law enforcement, as he did not represent himself to the Riverside girl as a police officer. It’s also unclear whether he received any mental-health counseling after the Feb. 8, 2016 incident.

Police responded to the home at 3:33 a.m. that day after medics requested help restraining Edwards, who was being held down by his father, Roy Edwards, and who had resisted their efforts to treat a serious cut on his left hand, the police report said.

“Austin made several statements in the presence of officers that he wanted to die, that he would try to kill himself the instant he was free from restraints, and that he would kill his father,” Officer Crystal E. Dea wrote. “The Washington County Life Saving Crew went hands on and fought the subject to get handcuffs on.”

Roy Edwards told police that he and his son had each consumed two beers the day before while watching the Super Bowl. He awakened before dawn and found his son locked in a bathroom and saying he was unable to get out. Roy Edwards pried the door open and saw a cut on his son’s hand, with knives and a hatchet nearby.

Roy Edwards called for an ambulance but when his son learned about that, he tried to leave the apartment. So his father held him back.

“Roy had bite marks on both forearms caused by Austin while he was restraining him. Roy advised that Austin never had a history of suicidal behavior,” the report said.

Austin Edwards’ strange behavior apparently continued. NBC News reported that weeks before Edwards killed the Wineks, he purchased a two-bedroom home in Saltville, Virginia, without first examining it and blacked out the windows upon moving in.

Police have searched the home but have not revealed what they saw or seized.

It was unclear Wednesday whether Roy Edwards was ever interviewed during the background check on his son. A phone number for him could not be located.

“What did they do when they did the background check?” said Bueermann, the policing consultant. “Somebody would have known about that (mental-health incident) and that is somebody they should have talked to.”