STAFFORD COUNTY, Va. — It’s been three weeks since 17-year-old Evan Newsom was shot and killed by police. And during that time no new official details about the shooting have been released.
We don’t know what led to a Stafford sheriff’s deputy walk inside the home, draw his gun, and kill the teenager.
At a series of press briefings the day of the shooting, the public was told the teen was armed with a knife and sliced a deputy causing a superficial wound. He was was treated at the scene.
Last night, a woman who answered the door at the home where the shooting took place declined to speak with PotomacLocal.com.
Stafford sheriff’s officials have also been silent on the details of the case pending a Virginia State Police probe. They have also declined to say if the deputy who pulled the trigger was placed on any sort of official review or paid leave following the shooting.
The only new details in the case come from Newsom’s mother, Angela, who penned a long letter to Fredericksburg.com.
She states in the letter she and her son got into an argument the night of the shooting, that he hit her, and then he took the keys of the family’s Hyundai Elantra. A novice driver with only a learner’s driver’s permit to his name, and then later crashed it in a ditch about a quarter mile away from the house.
The letter states Evan walked from the from crash site, and slept on a couch. The mother states she received a phone call at 3:30 a.m. Nov. 2 from a neighbor who told her Fauquier deputies knew about the Elantra in the ditch, according to the letter on Fredericksburg.com:
He had walked home after the car accident. They were trying to talk Evan into going to the car and letting them help get it out of the ditch and back home in the driveway. Apparently Evan did not want to do that and said something about how much trouble he was going to be in and wanting to run, at which time he went outside and got in the older car.
The husband told Evan to give him the keys but Evan wouldn’t so the husband started trying to physically take them from Evan. That is the time I was woken up by the wife and came outside to help. The husband was able to take the keys from Evan but Evan bit his thumb in the process. At that point, the wife called Fauquier deputies back.
Deputies arrived at the house a short time later and were told Evan was still inside. Newsom states she told police her son was not violent, but that he held the door shut and and refused to let in his mother or police into the house.
Then he went into the kitchen and grabbed a steak knife. He held it up and showed it to police and yelled it was over, she stated.
The letter goes onto state deputies then told Newsom to get back from the door. She then describes a second police unit arriving on the scene who began taunting the teenager, calling him names, and urging her son to make a move.
More now from that letter as it appeared on Fredericksburg.com:
This went on for two to three minutes which would have been about the time it would take to get thru the mother- in-law apartment, up the back stairs, and thru the upstairs of the main home to the stairway at the main entryway. Then I heard pop, pop, pop, then glass breaking. There was no delay between any of that. No one heard police announce their entry to Evan or any warning to put down the knife or they would fire and no one heard sounds of a physical altercation. I later learned from the neighbor that the deputies refused the suggestion to guard the door and entered the main house with guns drawn.
Evan Newsom would have turned 18-years-old in January, according to his mother’s statement.
