During the latter months of 2022, 28-year-old Austin Lee Edwards, then a Virginia State Police officer posing as a 17-year-old boy in an online relationship, sent jewelry and gift cards to a teenage Riverside girl and paid for her grocery and fast-food deliveries.
They exchanged voice recordings and text messages through Instagram and Discord as the 15-year-old member of the Winek family kept those activities a secret from her parents.
The teen eventually broke off the relationship when shortly after Halloween, Edwards pushed for her to send photos of herself naked. Edwards responded to the breakup and being blocked on Instagram with an emailed threat of suicide.
What happened next became the basis for a new lawsuit filed on Feb. 2, 2024, by an attorney for the girl whose grandparents, Mark and Sharon Winek, and mother Brooke, were slain by Edwards on Nov. 25, 2022, after he drove cross-country to their Price Court home with a plan to eliminate anyone in the way of his plot to kidnap the teen and drive her to Virginia.
Authorities said Edwards killed himself hours later as police cornered him in the Mojave Desert. The teen escaped, physically unharmed.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Virginia, names Washington County Sheriff Blake Andis, Detective William Smarr and Edwards’ estate as defendants
This is the second lawsuit filed against Washington County in this case. The first, by Mychelle Blandin, sister of Brooke Winek, seeks unspecified damages. Washington County said in its response filed in U.S. District Court in California that it is not liable for Edwards’ actions because “they were not taken within the scope of his employment.”
The new lawsuit seeks $50 million in damages and alleges how “deliberate indifference” in the Sheriff’s Office background check of Edwards after he resigned from the Virginia State Police a month before the killings allowed him to gain access to the Winek home by using his sheriff’s-issued badge and…
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