Norfolk man sentenced to 50 years for killing his girlfriend and their 2 infant children
A Norfolk man was sentenced to 50 years in prison Friday for the brutal murder of his girlfriend and their two infant children.
Norfolk Circuit Court Judge Jerrauld C. Jones handed down the 50-year sentence to Duwayne Warren, 27, six months after he pleaded guilty to murdering his infant daughter in December 2019 and his infant son and the mother of both children in December 2020.
The three murders occurred just a little more than a year apart. Each was particularly brutal.
The first was Dec. 19, 2019.
Norfolk Emergency services responded to a report of an unresponsive baby at the Hicks Avenue home Warren shared with his girlfriend. Warren told Norfolk police detectives that he had co-slept with his daughter and, upon waking, he noticed she was cold to the touch and unresponsive.
Three-month-old Evonne Warren was pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy showed she died from suspected asphyxia, with multiple healing internal and external injuries believed to have contributed to her death. However, the medical examiner who conducted Evonne’s autopsy could not rule out death caused by co-sleeping adults.
Then on Dec. 29, 2020, Evonne’s mother and baby brother were found dead on the living room floor of an Ocean View apartment after a neighbor called police about a domestic disturbance there.
According to a news release from Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney, Warren, who no longer lived with his 22-year-old girlfriend, Epifani Damere Andrews, was watching their baby boy over the Christmas holiday.
When Andrews came to pick the baby up, Warren led her inside the apartment to a back room where he stabbed her with a knife and beat her with a sound bar speaker.
An autopsy would show Andrews died from more than 25 stab and slash wounds to her face, head, chest, neck, arms and hand. Her face was so severely beaten she had to be identified through dental records.
Andrews’ infant son, Damere Warren, was already dead in his car seat when she arrived at Warren’s apartment. The baby was beaten and possibly smothered, according to his autopsy report. The boy had multiple fresh and healed broken bones, and bruises and abrasions covering his tiny body. Like his sister, he was just 3 months old.
“A call went to 911 as Mr. Warren was killing Ms. Andrews, and when the police arrived at the apartment, Mr. Warren stepped out of the apartment covered in blood,” the release said.
Warren told police he was “always angry” but didn’t know why he committed the murders.
The same day he killed Andrews and his son, Warren said he wrote a Facebook post, in which he apologized to Andrews for “not being a better and loving father” to their babies.
“I took everything from you and all I wanted to do is give you the world,” Warren wrote.
Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi shared news of the sentencing in a Twitter post Friday afternoon.
“There is no soul more innocent and worthy of love than a baby’s. Evonne and Damere deserved love, care, and affection... Their mother Epifani lived a life too short and suffered a terrible death at the hands of the man who claimed to love her,” Fatehi said.
Local and national resources for domestic violence and sexual assault victims in need of help, including 24-hour crisis hotlines, can be found below:
Chesapeake Forensic Specialists, 757-398-5105
HER Shelter in Portsmouth, 757-485-3384
Samaritan House Inc. in Virginia Beach, 757-430-2120
YWCA South Hampton Roads in Norfolk, 757-251-0144
National Domestic Violence Hotline, 1-800-799-7233
Jane Harper contributed to this report.
Caitlyn Burchett, 727-267-6059, caitlyn.burchett@virginiamedia.com
