The investigation advanced from a July 2024 shooting scene to an arrest, a recovered firearm, a three-day trial and a pending sentencing hearing.
NORFOLK, Va. — When Norfolk officers entered a home on Pretty Lake Avenue on the evening of July 21, 2024, they found 24-year-old Norman Andrew Hollowell Jr. critically wounded and a homicide investigation just beginning. Nearly two years later, that case ended in guilty verdicts against Steven Edward Williams Jr.
Williams, 25, was convicted June 18 of second-degree murder and using a firearm in the commission of murder after a jury heard three days of evidence about the shooting, a disputed television, social-media activity, doorbell-camera footage and Williams’ claim that he acted in self-defense. The path from the initial police call to the verdict involved evidence collected at several stages, including a gun recovered months after the killing in another Virginia city. Judge Robert L. Foley is scheduled to sentence Williams on Dec. 18, leaving punishment as the major unresolved step in the prosecution.
The investigation began at about 7:20 p.m. July 21, when officers were dispatched to the 2100 block of Pretty Lake Avenue for a reported shooting. Police initially described Hollowell as suffering from a life-threatening gunshot injury and said he was pronounced dead at the scene. Detectives continued working the case without publicly laying out a detailed motive. A police notice issued the next day identified Hollowell but offered little about the circumstances, reflecting the early stage of an investigation that would eventually rely on evidence far beyond what officers encountered inside the apartment.
Within weeks, investigators had identified Williams as a suspect and obtained warrants charging him with second-degree murder and use of a firearm. Norfolk police arrested him Aug. 13, 2024. The department announced the arrest the following day and said Williams, then 23, was being held without bond. At that point, the official public account remained spare: Hollowell had been shot, he had died, and detectives had developed evidence sufficient to charge Williams. The more detailed account of the relationship between the two men and the events preceding the gunfire would emerge later.
Investigators eventually traced the confrontation to a television left in Hollowell’s apartment by Williams’ older brother. The brother had been Hollowell’s roommate until February 2024 and left a large TV behind after moving out. According to prosecutors, Hollowell stored the set for months and asked Williams to retrieve it. When it remained uncollected, Hollowell sold it through Facebook Marketplace in early July. Hollowell and Williams were not strangers brought together by the property dispute; prosecutors said they had known each other since childhood because Hollowell was a close friend of Williams’ older brother.
Digital forensics helped police reconstruct Williams’ activity on the day Hollowell was killed. Prosecutors said Williams viewed Hollowell’s Facebook profile after the television had already been sold and then called him seven times on Facebook Messenger over about two hours. Hollowell was caring for a young nephew while making grocery deliveries. He eventually took one of Williams’ calls and agreed to meet at his apartment. When Hollowell returned, prosecutors said he left the nephew secured in the car, sent his mother a message saying he loved her and went upstairs.
Williams was already at the apartment complex and armed, the prosecution said. He waited outside Hollowell’s unit until Hollowell returned, and the two went inside. Their accounts could no longer be compared directly because Hollowell did not survive. Williams later testified that he believed he was there merely to pick up the television and did not know it had been sold. He said Hollowell told him the original television was gone but offered him another one. Williams had arranged for a cousin with a truck to assist with moving a set, and that cousin arrived with another person.
The next part of the chronology became the center of Williams’ self-defense claim. He testified that Hollowell became angry after seeing the two unfamiliar men and then pointed a gun at Williams’ face. Williams said that threat caused him to shoot. Prosecutors acknowledged investigators found a firearm on Hollowell, but said it had not been fired. They also said there was no additional evidence corroborating Williams’ contention that Hollowell pointed it at him. The jury would later have to decide whether Williams’ account created lawful justification for the shooting.
Doorbell-camera footage could not show the gunfire inside, but it preserved movement outside the apartment. The Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office said Williams shot Hollowell eight times about 13 minutes after the men went inside. Williams’ cousin and the other individual had arrived around two minutes before the shooting. After the gunfire, video showed those men leaving with a television while Williams followed carrying a gun. Witnesses were able to identify Williams from footage showing people entering and leaving the complex, according to prosecutors.
One piece of physical evidence was missing during the immediate aftermath: Williams’ firearm. Prosecutors said he disposed of it after the shooting and also deactivated his Facebook account within hours. The gun resurfaced months later when police in Suffolk encountered it during an unrelated incident. Forensic testing subsequently showed that every spent cartridge casing recovered from Hollowell’s apartment had been fired by that weapon, the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office said. Hollowell’s gun had not discharged any rounds. The late recovery of Williams’ gun therefore supplied physical evidence connecting the weapon he carried from the scene to the casings inside.
The case then moved from investigation to trial. Between June 16 and June 18, 2026, prosecutors and the defense presented competing explanations before Foley. Williams testified in support of his self-defense claim. The Commonwealth argued that his intentions were hostile and pointed jurors to the chain of evidence: his armed arrival, Facebook activity, repeated calls, the camera timeline, Hollowell’s unfired weapon, the casings matched to Williams’ gun and the steps Williams took after the shooting. Jurors deliberated for nearly three hours before finding him guilty as charged.
The long investigative timeline also helps settle an inconsistency in later news coverage. Norfolk police repeatedly recorded the homicide date as July 21, 2024: first when identifying Hollowell, again when announcing Williams’ arrest, and later in the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s account of the conviction. Law&Crime reported the shooting as occurring on July 24. Because the contemporaneous police notices and the later prosecutor’s account all agree on July 21, the primary public records provide the stronger basis for the date.
The verdict marked a change in Williams’ status that the earliest police documents could not anticipate. In August 2024 he was an accused man awaiting prosecution and entitled to the presumption of innocence. After the June 2026 trial, a jury had heard his testimony and the state’s evidence and convicted him of both charged offenses. Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi said the jury rejected the defense after considering the evidence and legal instructions. He said his office would seek a sentence that reflects the harm done to Hollowell and his family.
The investigation and prosecution involved Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney J. Drew Fairbanks, Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Williams S. Maydosz and Norfolk Police Sgt. Matthew M. Nordan, according to the prosecutor’s office. What began with officers finding Hollowell wounded in an Ocean View apartment ultimately grew into a case built from witness identification, social-media records, surveillance footage, physical evidence and Williams’ own trial testimony.
Williams’ next scheduled court milestone is sentencing before Foley on Dec. 18. No punishment had been imposed as of Oct. 20, and officials have not publicly specified the precise term prosecutors will request. Hollowell’s death, however, is no longer an unsolved homicide or merely a pending accusation: the jury has convicted Williams of second-degree murder and the associated firearm offense.
Author note: Last updated October 20, 2026.