A Virginia man drove the width of the United States, kidnapped a 15-year-old girl, shot her mother and grandparents dead in cold blood, torched their home and then killed himself in a shootout with California police. The gun he used came with the badge he wore back in Virginia.
So many questions. And to date, not enough answers.
Cops are vested with extraordinary legal authority over us in enforcing society’s laws, up to and including the taking of lives if their training and judgment tells them it’s necessary.
There’s rigorous testing, personal vetting and physical and mental training required before they wear the blue. Hopefully, that process is careful and thorough and only the best, most fit make it through. But then there was Austin Lee Edwards.
Edwards, 28, was a trooper for nearly a year and a half before he left the Virginia State Police in late October for a sheriff’s deputy job in Washington County near Bristol. He wasn’t on that job a month before he drove to Riverside, California, and sought out the child he had met online pretending to be someone else – a despicable practice known as “catfishing.” The carnage in his wake has generated sensational headlines worldwide.
When the Mercury’s Graham Moomaw filed a public records request with VSP for administrative documents and background checks on Edwards, the agency chose to “exercise its statutory discretion” and hide the documents from taxpayer view. Pressed for a reason for withholding information...
One repeated detail in the stories stood out: fictional encounters often featured people addressing Trump as “sir” and asking for help. In 2016, a Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star beg...