A family of four in North Carolina reportedly entered the sheriff’s office just hours before being found dead in what authorities say was a murder-suicide.
Aschod Ewing-Meeks, 26, entered the Davie County Sheriff’s Office with his girlfriend and two young children on April 18, according to Greensboro Fox affiliate WGHP. Meeks and his girlfriend, Ashton Brown, also 26, then made several calls to authorities over the next two hours until the family was found dead in their burning Junction Road home in Cooleemee.
Authorities say, Meeks who may have been suffering from mental illness due to his paranoid claims that someone was following him, fatally shot Brown and their children before setting fire to the home and turning the gun on himself.
Surveillance camera footage from earlier in the day shows the four of them entering the lobby of the sheriff’s office, according to WGHP. Brown can be seen holding the couple’s 8-month-old child, Brixtyn “Brixx” Ewing-Meeks, while 4-year-old Bella Ewing-Meeks stands nearby.
At 12:35 p.m., Brown then called 911 apparently from inside a car and asked to speak with an officer about unspecified safety concerns, authorities said.
About 10 minutes later, an officer called Brown back and briefly spoke to her before the call dropped or was ended, the sheriff said. Brown had told the officer she was calling for her boyfriend and handed the phone to Ewing-Meeks, according to the department’s timeline.
The officer called back three more times and spoke with Ewing-Meeks, who said “someone was following him,” but he refused to drive back to the sheriff’s office or tell the officer his exact location, Hartman said. The last two calls from the officer, at shortly after 1 p.m., went directly to voicemail, the sheriff added.
This tragedy once again raises the question of how to address mental illness in our community… Many experts now believed that the family’s last visit to the police station was a final attempt for the family to seek help. While the call for defunding the police has been misunderstood and used as a political weapon by Republicans, the primary objective for many who call for reallocation of funding in the Police department is to avoid tragedies such as this. If mental health experts are present at all police stations across the country and are made available for people that are seeking help, tragedies such as these could be avoided in the future.
AFRO WORLD NEWS
