Twenty-six-year-old Ashton Brown rushed to her local sheriff’s office in North Carolina with her two children because she feared for her life. Brown worried that her boyfriend, twenty-six-year-old Aschod Ewing-Meeks, would harm her or her two children, Bella, four, and Brixtyn, eight months. However, the sheriff’s office did not offer Brown, who was Black, protection from the dangerous man, who later killed his entire family before burning down their North Carolina home and ending his own life in an apparent murder-suicide, according to authorities in the area.
Now, investigators believe that Ewing-Meeks was responsible for killing his entire family before setting up their home in Davie County. He ended his own life with a gunshot and burned up in flames along with his murdered girlfriend and their two children.
About two hours before the murder-suicide, Brown and her boyfriend were captured on surveillance video, appearing at their local sheriff’s office looking for help from authorities. Although the family did not entirely clarify why they were at the sheriff’s office, they did request a chance to speak to a deputy in order to receive some help from law enforcement. The family, who were all Black, made several attempts to speak to someone at the sheriff’s office but did not receive the help they needed. Less than two hours after they left, Ewing-Meeks murdered his girlfriend, their two children, and himself before burning their home down to the ground.
The desperate family arrived at their sheriff’s office around 12:10 pm on April 18, 2022, but did not receive the help they needed. The receptionist gave the family a phone number, and they left the office around five minutes later.
“There was nothing out of the ordinary. They really wouldn’t interact with the receptionist or tell her what they wanted,” Davie County Sheriff JD Hartman said at a press conference Wednesday, People Magazine reported. He called the murder-suicide in his community “one of the worst, if not the worst” case he had ever witnessed during his career in law enforcement.
At 12:35 pm, Brown called 911, begging authorities to let her speak to a sheriff’s deputy. She told authorities that she feared for her family’s safety but did not explain exactly what she feared. Eleven minutes later, a deputy called Brown back, and she handed the phone over to Ewing-Meeks. Thirty seconds later, the call ended – it is not clear if someone hung up or if the connection dropped.
Authorities called back and had several short conversations with the family over the next thirty minutes.
“(Ewing-Meeks) advised with the officer that he thought that someone was following him, but he wasn’t in danger. They weren’t threatening him,” said Hartman. “The officer attempted to get them to come back to the sheriff’s office. They were driving around; they wouldn’t tell the officer where they were.”
Later that day, authorities arrived at the family’s burning home and found all four family members dead from gunshots.
“All four victims are deceased from gunshot wounds,” Hartman told reporters. “The fire was intentionally set. Mr. Meeks was deceased from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and we found the gun that matches all of this actually still in Mr. Meeks’ hand.”