Four Dead In Murder, Suicide in Va.
Man's Killing of Children Is Latest in Tragic Series

By Nick Miroff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 7, 2008

A man who killed his two young children and their mother in a Stafford County mobile home before taking his own life Monday night had been high on cocaine and drinking whiskey for days, according to a woman who said she spent the weekend with the man and was planning to move in with him next month.

Police said they think Aaron P. Jackson, 24, used an AK-47K--style assault rifle to fatally shoot his daughter, Nicole Aaron Jackson, 2 1/2 , his son, Aaron Neptune Jackson, 1 1/2 , and their mother, Latasha Nicole Thomas, 23, before committing suicide at the Walt Lou Trailer Park along Route 1, north of Fredericksburg. Both children were found alive in their cribs with gunshot wounds to the head and were rushed to hospitals -- one by helicopter -- but did not survive.

The incident was the latest in a recent string of domestic slayings in the Washington region. In March, a Montgomery County man drowned his three children in a hotel room bathtub, and since last year, at least six other family murder-suicides have taken place.

At the mobile home park in Stafford yesterday, Ashley Price, 24, of Spotsylvania showed up looking for Jackson, only to learn from reporters that the man she said she had begun dating Friday had killed his family and himself.

"Oh my God! Oh my God!" Price said yesterday, gasping for breath in her car as television cameras rolled. "We spent the whole weekend with each other."

A spokesman for the Stafford County Sheriff's Office said that investigators had not spoken to Price and that the probe is ongoing.

Price said Jackson called her from the mobile home Monday, asking her to pick him up. He told her that he had split up with Thomas and wanted her to leave the mobile home. But Price said she was taking care of her own daughter and told Jackson that she could not come get him.

"I wish I had come to pick him up," Price said, trembling from the news as she described their last conversation. "I heard his kids in the background, and I said, 'Enjoy your children.' "

Three hours later, the family was dead.

Police said that Jackson and Thomas had been fighting Monday and that Thomas had called a relative asking for help after being assaulted by Jackson. But she called back about 9:30 p.m. to say everything was all right.

Police said the relative drove to the mobile home park anyway and got no response when she knocked on the door. She checked with a neighbor, who told her he had heard a gunshot coming from the home about 10 minutes before she arrived, police said.

Yesterday, the mobile home where the family had lived for the past six months was strewed with children's clothing and trash, the kitchen counters crowded with empty liquor bottles. A pair of men's work boots rested by the door on the porch.

Neighbors said the couple "seemed happy" and showed no signs of trouble.

"Her daughter was gorgeous," said Melinda Goddard, whose kids played with the couple's children in the gravel driveways between the trailers. "They were precious babies."

Goddard and other neighbors said that Thomas worked in child care and that Jackson was a landscaper but was having trouble finding work lately.

"They stayed in the house a lot," said neighbor Rosemary Hollestelle, whose mobile home is a few feet from where the slayings occurred.

At times, she said, the couple would play music too loud, and her boyfriend knocked on their door Monday about 7 p.m. to ask them to lower the volume. They did but never came to the door, she said. She and her boyfriend were awakened a few hours later when police and paramedics arrived.

None of the neighbors interviewed at the small mobile home park said they heard more than a single shot -- and most dismissed the sound as a firecracker.

Richard Atchley, who manages the park and tends a propane-filling station along the highway out front, said Thomas had approached him over the weekend asking whether she could be removed from the lease.

"She wanted to move back with her family," he said, adding that there had been no indication of trouble at the couple's home Monday.

But Price said that the couple had been feuding and that Jackson had invited her and her daughter to move in next month because Thomas and the children were moving out.

Price said that she had known Jackson for several years but that the two became romantically involved after meeting up Friday at Buffalo Wild Wings Grill and Bar in Fredericksburg.

She said they spent the night at a Travelodge and bought two grams of cocaine the next day before driving to Culpeper, where they went to a club and spent the night at the Sleepy Hollow Motel.

"We were just having fun," she said, adding that Jackson "didn't seem like the kind of person who would do this."

She said, however, that Jackson had a knife and two handguns, telling her he had a concealed weapons permit. She also said Jackson bought a large bottle of whiskey and drank heavily from it over the weekend.

He was drinking from it again and using cocaine when he called Price on Monday to ask for a ride, she said.

She said Jackson then told her, "I'll probably go to jail tonight," but she dismissed the comment as a joke.

The nearly empty bottle of Evan Williams was visible yesterday through the shattered window of the family's mobile home.