A18 eZ re the washington post.thursday, february 20 , 2020
Hartman, a spokesman for the
fauquier County Sheriff’s Depart-
ment. Scott Hook, fauquier’s
commonwealth’s attorney, will
decide whether to leave the case
in juvenile court or seek to try him
as an adult.
Whatever the outcome, the
shooting has left Norwood shat-
tered emotionally and wounded
physically, with a gash from the
bullet above his eye.
“Every day for the rest of my
life,” he said, “I’m going to wake
up, look in the mirror, and I’m
going to have a scar down my f ace,
my head, as a memory of the
worst day of my life, when my
family got taken away.”
Norwood said he doesn’t know
how his son would have gotten a
gun. He always kept the family’s
firearms in a double-locked safe
to which the teenager didn’t have
access, he said.
The previous Sunday, the two
of them had taken a drive to
richmond so his son could clock
the hours behind the wheel he
needed to get his license.
“He was great,” Norwood said.
“We were laughing.”
And on the morning of the
shooting, his wife texted him that
Levi and Wyatt were curled up
together before the school bus
came.
That evening, Norwood would
find the boy’s body in the same
spot, allegedly slain by the broth-
er who’d cuddled with him hours
earlier.
Norwood could not fathom
who his son had become. “He’s
not the same person,” he said.
The rest of the family is also
struggling to understand what
happened.
Ginny Norwood, Josh’s m other,
wrote on facebook that she had
spoken to Wyatt that morning.
The 6-year-old was excited be-
cause his mother was coming to
school to have lunch with him. He
asked his grandma whether she
could come, too. Next time, she
promised.
“We are all devastated,” she
wrote. “Josh has lost his entire
family. Levi’s life is ‘gone.’ ”
Despite the murder charges
against her grandson, Ginny Nor-
wood said she was praying for
him.
“I love Levi still but am so
confused,” she wrote. “We are all
empty pray for us.”
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]tom Jackman and Donna st. george
contributed to this report.like him, but they would say de-
rogatory things about black stu-
dents.
Levi was friendly and accept-
ing of all kinds of kids, said Jerry
Hernandez, 16, another class-
mate. That’s why it surprised him
when Levi would make com-
ments about his family’s intoler-
ance.
“He used to talk about how his
father was a racist,” said Jerry,
who met Levi in the seventh
grade. He said Levi lamented be-
ing unable to bring certain
friends around his father because
they were black.
The close relative supported
their claims.
Josh and Jen were “really prej-
udiced, as much as I hate to sayshoot as well.
friends at Liberty High in
Bealeton described Levi as quiet
but funny and engaging with
those he knew well. But they also
said a shadow hung over him: his
family’s alleged racism.
Te rrell Smith said he had been
close with Levi for years but had
never met his parents — some-
thing Smith, 17, attributed to the
fact that he is African American.
Levi had told him that his family
wasn’t welcoming toward anyone
who wasn’t white.
Alex Kim, 16, said he took tae-
kwondo with Levi when they
were in middle school at the stu-
dio Alex’s parents own. Levi’s par-
ents, he recalled, didn’t seem to
have a problem with Asian kidsreptile shop. Wyatt was born a few
years later — the spitting image of
his older brother.
Jen loved being a mother, Nor-
wood said. Her facebook page —
with “proud mom” i n the url —
was filled with American flags,
photos of her sons and fundrais-
ers for their schools.
“She was very protective of
both our boys,” Norwood said.
“our boys grew up in a loving
household. We t old them we loved
them every day.”
Norwood taught Levi to fish
and hunt. He a lso took the teen to
the gun range to practice his
marksmanship.
“We were a regular family,” he
said, adding that he and Levi had
recently started teaching Wyatt tosaid her office works closely with
field and district staffers on
quarterly lease sales. “BLm Utah
does not discuss internal
discussions and deliberative
decision-making between the
field and state office,” s he said.
There are other concerns
besides the bike trail.
moab is also a hub for visitors
to Arches National Park, which
attracted more than 1.6 million
parkgoers in 2018. The bright
light from any nearby flaring off
excess gas may spoil the star-
speckled sky over the nearby
park, which draws astronomy
buffs for its awe-inspiring views
of the milky Way.
And the area proposed for
leasing overlaps with an aquifer
on which moab relies for
drinking water.
“Grand County has no
alternative drinking water
source,” mcGann said.
The residents of moab have
fought this battle before. Late
into President George W. Bush’s
last year in office, the BLm tried
leasing tens of thousands of acres
near Arches and Canyonlands
national parks in Utah before
backing down because of the
resulting public outcry and a
lawsuit.
[email protected]
[email protected]BLm’s moab field manager,
Nicollee Gaddis-Wyatt, said the
agency understands “that the
public has concerns about some
of the parcels that are currently
under internal consideration” f or
the June lease auction.
“We are committed to
supporting recreation and
protecting natural resources in
the moab field office and to
listening to our neighbors and
representatives in the local
community,” she said. “The BLm
has not yet made a final decision
regarding what parcels will be
proposed for sale.”
The Sand flats recreation
Area, which is jointly managed
by the BLm and Grand County,
attracts more than 191,
visitors a year and generates
$700,000 of revenue for the
county government, according to
Grand County Council Chair
mary mcGann. The two parcels
were nominated for auction by
an anonymous individual or
company.
Korenblat emphasized that
local BLm officials had worked
closely with local residents to
protect the trail and that
residents had urged the BLm’s
Utah State office not to offer the
two parcels as possible leases.
In a statement, BLm Utah
spokeswoman Kimberly finchin the Sand flats.
Now those outside the county
are taking notice. A group of 80
outdoors companies, including
Clif Bar and the backpack
makers Kelty and Dakine, said in
a letter to Interior Secretary
David Bernhardt that inclusion
of the Slickrock Trail in the oil
and gas auction was “an
astounding move that threatens
one of the most iconic recreation
experiences in the country.”
In a statement Tuesday, themoab, said she is not against
nearby oil and gas drilling. But
she takes issue with drilling
under the Slickrock Trail when
many other areas have yet to be
drilled.
“There are so many, many
parcels in Grand County that
have been leased for oil and gas
that have not yet been
developed,” Niehaus said. The
five-member moab City Council
passed a resolution last month
opposing leasing the two parcelsin an effort to boost domestic
energy production.
But the proposal to lease two
parcels in the Sand flats
recreation Area, which
surrounds the 9.6-mile bike trail,
has sparked controversy in
Utah’s Grand County even before
the federal government starts
accepting comments Thursday.
The BLm has not finalized the
list of parcels to be included in
the June auction. And if offered,
the two Sand flats parcels would
come with a stipulation
requiring the lease holder to find
a suitable location on nearby
state-owned or private land from
which to drill horizontally.
Trump ally and Utah Gov. Gary
r. Herbert (r) is asking the BLm
to defer leasing the two parcels,
one of which would cover over
60 percent of the trail. “The
Governor appreciates the unique
beauty of the Slickrock area and
wants to ensure that nothing is
done that would be detrimental
to the visitor experience or local
water quality,” Herbert
spokeswoman Anna Lehnardt
said in a statement Tuesday.
Emily Niehaus, the mayor ofIt is one of the best-known
mountain biking trails in the
world. But the Trump
administration may lease it for
oil and natural gas drilling.
A preliminary proposal from
the Bureau of Land management
to auction the right to drill under
Utah’s Slickrock Trail has left
cyclists, residents and even the
state’s republican governor
wondering why the Trump
administration is considering
undercutting what has become a
major source of tourism revenue
for the region.
for more than half a century,
the trail has drawn mountain
bikers from around the world
eager to ride its undulating and
otherworldly sandstone hills.
“It really is the most famous
bike trail in the world,” s aid
Ashley Korenblat, the chief
executive of Western Spirit
Cycling, a mountain bike
outfitter based in the nearby city
of moab. “It was one of the first
places that was really identified
as an incredible place to ride a
mountain bike.”
The nearly 6,600 acres that
could be leased in June in
southeastern Utah represent just
a fraction of the millions of acres
of federal lands and waters the
Trump administration has
auctioned to oil and gas drillers
Oil and gas drilling could be coming to Utah’s world-famous Slickrock bike trail
The Energy 202
d ino Grandoni
and Juliet eilperinpaul morton/getty images
Cyclists and authorities in Utah see the potential leasing of parcels
around Slickrock for energy drilling as a threat to tourism revenue.Jen Norwood, above, was found
dead inside her home along
with her 6-year-old, Wyatt,
right, on friday. Her husband,
Josh Norwood, said he doesn’t
know how his older son would
have gotten a gun. He always
kept the family’s firearms in a
double-locked safe to which the
teenager didn’t have access, he
said.this,” s aid the relative, who spoke
on the condition of anonymity for
fear she would upset the family.
“When Leviathan was just
3 years old, [Josh] used to say the
n-word all the time,” t he relative
recalled.
His facebook cover page
quotes David Lane’s “14 words,”
which the Southern Poverty Law
Center describes as “the best-
known slogan of the U.S. white
supremacist movement.” Lane,
founder of a group called the
order, died in prison after a con-
viction in the killing of a Jewish
radio host in 1984.
“I don’t even remember why I
put it [up],” Norwood said of the
post, which remained online as of
Wednesday. “maybe I was having
a bad day.”
According to his friends, Levi’s
relationship with his girlfriend
made him happier than he had
been in a long time. But they also
wondered how the interracial re-
lationship would play with his
parents.
Both were against his dating a
black girl, the relative said, but his
father was “adamant” about the
issue. “He didn’t want Leviathan
having anything to do with her.”
Norwood insisted his opposi-
tion to the relationship had noth-
ing to do with race.
“I don’t care about that,” he
said. “The only thing I told him
was, ‘Levi, this girl has a few
issues, she’s working through
some stuff, and you guys don’t
need to bring each other down.
You don’t need people, who need
help and support, to feed off of
each other and cause you to get
worse.’ ”
Norwood said that Levi was not
on antidepressants or other medi-
cation, but that his grades had
begun to suffer. His parents had
recently taken away Levi’s cell-
phone when the teenager “lied” t o
them, Norwood said, about study-
ing after school when he was
actually with his girlfriend.
The teenagers documented
their deepening feelings for each
other on Instagram, while also
hinting at the hurdles they faced.
“I hate it when bad/sad things
happen to my Bubby,” the girl
wrote on Jan. 2 next to a drawing
of a black girl comforting a white
boy. “I would just love to take
every ach and pain his heart and
mind has to endure. Holding him
tight as I say everything is gonna
eventually be better then now.”‘Worst day of my life’
Norwood hasn’t been back to
the brick house on Elk run road.
The last sight of it was his wife’s
flowers in the entryway, sur-
rounded by his blood.
His relatives who went there
over the weekend described his
favorite meal of chopped chicken
breast uncooked on the stove; a
Valentine’s present for Wyatt —
his beloved mr. Potato Head from
“Toy Story” — still unwrapped;
and a bullet through his wife’s
lizard tank.
This is what the shooting has
left h im: a house he can’t l ive in, a
double funeral scheduled for Sun-
day and criminal proceedings
against a son whose name he can
no longer bear to say.
Levi is expected to be returned
in the coming days to Virginia,
where he faces arraignment on
the two murder charges in juve-
nile court, according to Sgt. Jamesfauquier County Sheriff’s Depart-
ment, setting off a manhunt for
the 5-foot-9-inch, 125 -pound
teen. The Liberty High School
junior had fled the family’s house
on foot, authorities said, before
stealing a car and driving 200
miles south. He was trying to
shoplift hair dye — to disguise his
purple-tinted locks, authorities
said — at a store in Durham, N.C.,
when police there arrested him.
As he grieves for his wife and
first-grader, Norwood also wres-
tles with anger toward his elder
child, whom he now refers to only
as “the one who took them away.”
Norwood said Levi had been “a
little depressed” r ecently, enough
that the family had scheduled a
doctor’s appointment for him
monday — three days after the
shooting. But Norwood said that
he was raised in a “loving home”
and that there had been no “red
flags” surrounding his recent be-
havior.
With no clear motive named in
the family tragedy, Norwood has
also had to defend himself against
accusations of racism that some
suspect played a role.
four classmates told The Post
that Levi described his father as
racist. A facebook page belonging
to Norwood is adorned with a
notorious white supremacist
motto known as the “14 words”:
“We must secure the existence of
our race, and a future for white
children.”
A close relative said Norwood
was upset that Levi was dating a
black girl.
Norwood denies being a white
supremacist. He p osted the motto
in 2014 but said it was “nothing
that I believe or stand for.”
He said he and his wife had
pressured Levi to stop seeing his
girlfriend shortly before the
shootings because the relation-
ship was “bringing him down,”
not because she was black.
The girl, who attends the same
school as Levi, did not respond to
requests for comment. Her par-
ents declined to comment.
The allegations of racism have
only added to his pain, Norwood
said.
“You don’t know how to feel,”
he said. “A ll you have are just
questions of why and how. How
your little boy grew up to do
something like that.”
‘a regular family’
They met in a pet store in
maine. Josh Norwood was a teen-
ager behind the counter when Jen
overlock walked in.
“I was a snake guy,” he recalled.
“She came in and asked about
ferrets, and I said, ‘Wow, I liked
that.’ ”
They s tarted dating. And a year
later, Norwood proposed to her at
a Pantera concert. When they
married in 2002, Jen was only 16.
Her mother had to give consent,
the relative said.
When the couple had their first
child a year later, they named him
after their favorite pet: a large
snake called Leviathan.
“It was a strong name,” Nor-
wood said. “Something unusual.”
To most people, the quiet boy
with dark brown eyes was simply
known as Levi.
When he was about 6 years old,
the family moved to Virginia so
that Norwood could manage a
family from a
Father says no ‘red flags’ for son charged in double killing
family photosfauquier county sheriff's office
levi Norwood, 17, faces murder
charges and will be returned to
Virginia from North Carolina.