On the evening of November 18, 2012, 24-year-old TeSean Wilkerson was shot in the Lochview Drive apartment he shared with his mother, Sonja Adkinson, in Newport News, Virginia. Adkinson called 911 at 8:16 p.m. and admitted she had shot her son. Wilkerson was found in an upstairs bedroom with a gunshot wound to his back, rushed to a hospital, and pronounced dead.

Adkinson told investigators she fired to prevent Wilkerson from harming another family member, a claim several witnesses contradicted; the complaint did not identify the alleged threatened family member. Police records show officers had been called to the apartment for domestic disturbances in the months before the shooting. Friends and co-workers described Wilkerson as over six feet tall, about 250 pounds, employed at Crestwood Suites for roughly two years and beginning a welding apprenticeship; he was engaged to be married.

Adkinson was charged with second-degree murder; that charge was later reduced in a plea agreement to voluntary manslaughter, and she also pleaded guilty to unlawful shooting and discharging a firearm in an occupied building. Does anyone have information about the disturbances at the Lochview apartment or knew TeSean’s plans and relationships before November 18, 2012?