A former Virginia police officer was killed in a shootout on Nov. 25 with San Bernardino County Sheriffs after allegedly killing the mother and grandparents of a 15-year-old girl he had met online and catfished.

The 28-year-old former officer, Austin Lee Edwards, is believed to have posed as a teenager online in order to engage in a possible romantic relationship with a teenage girl. He had then driven from Virginia to Riverside, a city in Southern California where the girl resided, and killed her family in order to kidnap her.

According to the Riverside Police Department, officers had responded to a 911 call about a young girl possibly in distress while getting into a red Kia Soul with a man. During that time, operators began receiving calls about a house fire a short distance away from the previous call. 

Three dead bodies had been found inside the flaming residence. The grandparents of the girl, Mark and Sharie Winek, and the girl’s mother, Brooke Winek. 

The exact cause of death is still being investigated, as well as the cause of the house fire, though a preliminary report shows that investigators believe that the fire had been intentionally set.

Investigators believed that the original calls about a young girl in distress had been related to the house fire. Because of this, the information was relayed to surrounding law enforcement agencies to help locate the girl.

Several hours after the information was released, Edwards was found by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office in the Kelso area where a shootout then began, inevitably ending in Edwards’ death.

Investigators report that the young girl was found unharmed and then later placed into the protective custody of the public social services in Riverside County. 

Detectives believe that Edwards had catfished the young girl online, a common form of online deception, “where someone pretends to be a different person than they actually are,” the police said. It is believed that he used this method to gain the girl’s trust enough so that she revealed her personal information, including where she lived. He then used this information to travel from Virginia to Riverside where he “parked his vehicle in a neighbor’s driveway and walked to the teen’s home.” 

In a public statement the next Monday after the killings, the Winek family thanked everyone for their support over the past few days, with it being a horrific time in their life. They continued to talk about the other Wineks, Mark, Sharie, and Brooke. 

It is currently unknown as to why Edwards resigned from the Virginia State police.