2 Others Inside Home When Police Shot Teen Dead

EXCLUSIVE 

By URIAH KISER

Investigators took nine 40-caliber bullet casings from the home where a law enforcement officer shot and killed a teenager last month.

Evan Newsom, 17, was inside his home on Tacketts Mill Road just across the Stafford County line in Fauquier County, when he was shot and killed by a Stafford County sheriff’s deputy shortly after 4 a.m. Nov. 2. That deputy and others from Stafford were called to the home that morning to assist Fauquier law enforcement officials after the teenager had grabbed a knife, locked himself in the house, and did not comply with orders of police officers, said Virginia State Police.

While at least one officer was at the front door communicating with Newsom, another team of deputies – apparently from Stafford County — entered the home from a side door and approached Newsom. While inside, police maintain the 17-year-old used the knife and cut a deputy causing a superficial wound.

Police then fired a gun killing Newsom instantly. The deputy was treated for a minor injury on the scene, police said.

Virginia State Police were called to investigate the incident, and just hours after the shooting held two press conferences that offered basic details of what happened in the early morning hours of Nov. 2. After the final briefing, they promised more information would later be released in an email statement. More than six weeks later no new details have surfaced, and law enforcement officials have yet to identify which officer pulled the trigger and if they were placed on any type of routine leave pending the investigation.

Now Evan’s mother, Angela Newsom, is remembering her son and is calling for justice in what she says was a senseless death. And neighbors who live in an adjoining apartment unit told PotomacLocal.com police did not announce their presence before they opened fire, nor did they search the interior rooms of the house to make sure no one else was inside before discharging their firearms.

Raining chunks of glass

The single family house in which Angela Newsom lived with her 17-year-old son is divided into three apartments – all three of which were occupied the early morning of the the shooting. An 18-year-old who asked not to be identified told PotomacLocal.com he was lying in his bed in the basement apartment unit directly below where Evan Newsom was shot and killed. He heard gunshots ring out but had no idea what was happening, he said.

His mother, who also asked not to be identified, heard glass shatter after gunshots went off.

“It sounded like it was raining chunks of glass, and my son said ‘mom, get out of the house; they’re shooting upstairs,” she said.

Both ran outside of the house to find a sea of police cruisers with lights flashing, she said.

Car in a ditch

Fauquier deputies were initially called to the neighborhood that early morning after they found a late model Hyundai Elenatra that had run off the road and into a ditch at the nearby intersection of Aquia and Tacketts Mill roads. Evan Newsom is believed to have accidentally driven that car — which belonged to his mother — into that ditch after he took the vehicle without her permission.

The night before the shooting, Evan and his mother argued and the son hit his mother. Angela Newsom said things had never escalated to that level of violence before, and added she was not comfortable talking about what sparked the argument.

She was asleep when Evan took the car, and it’s believed that Evan walked home after the car crashed into the ditch. Angela Newsom said her son only had a learners permit and that he did not have much experience driving on two-lane country roads like the one on which they lived.

Fauquier sheriff’s deputies found the car in the ditch and apparently called the only number they had on file for the home – a phone number that belonged to a man and woman who live in a third apartment at the home.

After they got the call, Angela Newsom said the couple went to Evan, who had walked home, and offered to help him get the car back to the house. But Evan refused, said he was worried about how much trouble he was going to be in once police found out he crashed the car, and said he wanted to run away, said Angela Newsom.

He then grabbed a set of keys to Angela Newsom’s second car that was parked in the driveway, as those keys were on the same ring as the ones to the Hyundai Elantra. Evan walked to the second car but the man in the apartment next door, someone who had befriended Evan, tried to stop him from leaving. He was able to take the keys away, but Evan bit his thumb, said Newsom. The man then stopped trying to help and urged his wife to call police, she added.

Deputies arrive

By this time, the wife of the man whose thumb had been bitten had alerted Angela Newsom to what was happening. She came outside and witnessed the confrontation between the man and her son, and was unable to speak to Evan afterward, she said.

By now police had arrived at the home and Evan went back into the house and locked the door behind him. He ran to the kitchen and grabbed a steak knife, then held both arms up in the air and shouted “it’s over,” Newsom states.

Deputies then told Angela they would break the glass if Evan didn’t open the door, and threatened to use a taser gun if Evan did not put down the knife, Angela Newsom said. Minutes later, a second police unit arrived and pulled into a neighbor’s driveway but never approached the front porch where the other officer was standing, said Newsom. Instead, those deputies entered the home through the side apartment that belonged to the man who had his thumb bitten, she added. That apartment has an entryway into Angela Newsom’s home, which she says deputies used to reach her son who was standing just inside the front door of Newsom’s apartment.

Meanwhile, the deputy on the porch yelled obscenities at the 17-year-old, urged him to confront the officers, and then said “you aren’t man enough to do anything,” stated Newsom. Then, without warning, Newsom – who was standing in the front yard away from the porch — said she heard what sounded like three gunshots and then the sound of glass breaking.

Evan had been shot and killed.

Afterward, police spent hours inside the house conducting their investigation. Newsom and other witnesses said emergency crews on the scene did nothing to revive her son and made no efforts to rush him to a hospital.

When detectives asked Angela Newsom about what happened that night, she said they were more interested in how the car ended up in the ditch and less concerned about her son.

“They were more worried about the car and Evan would have done two years ago, or three years ago, and not about what happened out here that night. And at the end of the interview I had told him ‘you’re not investigating a shooting, you’re not investigating whether or not deadly force should’ve been used, you’re investigating my son,” Newsom told PotomacLocal.com.

Newsom preferred not to talk about her son’s past, a history she says investigators asked her about. Her son’s past was irrelevant to the decisions the deputies made when her son was shot, she added.

In addition to the nine shell casings, investigators also took a knife, two bullets, and a notebook, according to police documents. It’s not clear what that notebook contained.

Angela Newsom said her son wasn’t perfect, but that he wasn’t a troubled teen, either. He did not use drugs or alcohol to the best of her knowledge, she said. Following Evan’s death, investigators ordered a toxicology report but the results have yet to come back.

Newsom said her son was most likely worried that police had found the car in the ditch, and was worried about the consequences of a subsequent police report and how it would hurt his chances of getting into college to pursue his dream of becoming veterinarian.

“I want him back. [I hope] they’re charging [the police officer that shot Evan] with murder, and they’re going after Stafford County for letting this happen,” said Newsom.

Evan came to Fauquier to attend school

Evan Newsom would have turned 18-years-old in January. A senior at Liberty High School in Bealton, he was in the process of filling out college applications around the time he was killed, his mother Angela said.

His first college choice was Virginia Tech, a school which has a veterinary teaching hospital. His second choice was to attend George Mason University in Fairfax.

Evan and his mother had lived in their home since July after moving from Portsmouth. Angela, who works at Quantico Marine Corps Base, chose to live in Fauquier County because the public schools offered her son the opportunity to enroll in a block scheduling program which offered him a chance to take a full school year of classes in just one semester – something he needed if he was going to obtain the advanced studies diploma he had been working so hard to get.

“We laughed about it. I told him ‘I’m going to be driving 45 minutes to an hour to Quantico and you’re going to be on that school bus,” she said.

Evan was in the process of making friends at school, though his mother said he spent the majority of his life in Henrico County, Va. Both lived there prior to living in Portsmouth and later moving to Fauquier County.

Angela said about 10 of his friends came to his funeral service and uttered kind words about him.

“Someone said to me ‘the thing that sticks out to me most about Evan is that no matter what anybody said to him, if it bothered him, he would just get up and walk off,” said Newsom.

“He wasn’t perfect, but there is a hell of a lot worse out there walking around.”