On the night of May 17, 2013, 52-year-old Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority officer Steven Spradling was found shot to death inside his home on Blossom Drive in Sterling, Virginia after a neighbor reported hearing gunfire. Loudoun County Sheriff’s deputies discovered him deceased when they responded. His wife, 42-year-old Rosangela Spradling, was arrested at the scene and charged with first-degree murder. The couple’s two young children were in the house during the shooting and were not physically harmed.

Reports describe a history of domestic disputes at the residence, with neighbors calling Steven Spradling volatile and intimidating. The investigation and later defense filings portray a household marked by long-term domestic abuse, alleging Steven’s aggression and alcohol-fueled violence. According to those accounts, a recent physical struggle included an instance of strangulation; children interrupted the fight, and Rosangela then retrieved a firearm and shot him.

In October 2015 Rosangela Spradling entered an Alford plea to voluntary manslaughter, shooting in the commission of a felony, and two counts of discharging a firearm in an occupied dwelling, and was sentenced. Does anyone who lived in that neighborhood or knew the family have additional information about the background of the relationship or the calls for help made to law enforcement?