MIDLAND, Va. (AP) — A 17-year-old boy charged with fatally shooting his mother and 6-year-old brother in their Virginia home was apprehended after he tried to shoplift hair dye, clothes and a backpack from a North Carolina department store, police said Sunday.
Levi Norwood was arrested Saturday after employees at a Target in Durham, North Carolina, found him in the sporting goods section and called police, said Sgt. James Hartman, a spokesman for the Fauquier County Sheriff’s Department in Virginia.
In the store’s parking lot, investigators found a car Norwood stole in Virginia after killing his mother and brother and wounding his father on Friday evening at their home in Midland, Virginia, authorities said. Investigators didn’t immediately find any guns in Norwood’s possession, but Fauquier County Sheriff Robert Mosier said the stolen car would be brought back to Virginia and searched for weapons.
Norwood’s father, who escaped and called for help, was in stable condition at a hospital on Saturday. The sheriff wouldn’t provide any updates on the father’s condition Sunday.
Norwood was charged with two counts of murder in the killing of Jennifer Norwood, 34, and her son Wyatt.
Midland is about 55 miles (85 kilometers) southwest of Washington, D.C. Law enforcement officers initially believed Norwood had barricaded himself inside the family’s home but didn’t find him in there when they entered the residence after trying to contact him for several hours.
Fauquier County’s sheriff and public schools superintendent said they didn’t know whether Norwood, a junior at Liberty High School in Bealeton, had any reported behavioral or health problems, the Washington Post reported.
Adam Moore, a 17-year-old classmate of Norwood, told the newspaper that he saw the boy in school on Friday morning and “he definitely didn’t seem sad or anything.”