NORFOLK — The mother of a woman who died from an overdose after a man drugged her and took her to his Ocean View apartment is suing the city, claiming her daughter’s death could have been prevented if police had properly investigated a similar death at the same apartment months earlier.
Kathy Paton, mother of Kelsey Paton, filed the lawsuit last week in U.S. District Court in Norfolk. Listed as defendants are the city of Norfolk and an unnamed police officer. Paton is seeking $7.5 million in damages.
The lawsuit also alleges the mother of Michael Ebong — the man a jury determined was responsible for Kelsey Paton’s death — used her “influence” as an employee of the Norfolk Police Department to interfere with investigations involving her son. Ebong’s mother, Maravia Reid, worked in various administrative positions for the department for 27 years before retiring last year, according to a city spokesperson. She is not named as a defendant in the complaint and couldn’t be reached for comment.
“The City of Norfolk is aware of the lawsuit and will respond appropriately through court filings when and if it is served,” spokesman Chris Jones wrote in an email to The Virginian-Pilot. “While the City sympathizes with the Paton family, it denies that NPD obstructed justice and it will defend the lawsuit accordingly.”
Ebong, 45, was convicted last year of two counts of manslaughter for the overdose deaths of Paton in July 2021, and Sheena West in November 2020. The jury also found him guilty of sexually assaulting another woman who was drugged and brought back to his apartment in the months between the other two women’s deaths. That woman survived the ordeal and testified at Ebong’s trial. The Pilot is not naming her because she was the victim of a sexual assault.
Ebong was supposed to have been sentenced in December, but the hearing was postponed after he became disruptive in court. He was ordered to undergo a competency evaluation after his public defenders told the judge he’d become increasingly delusional since being found guilty.
The first of the incidents Ebong was found guilty of at trial last year involved West, who was with friends at Central Shore, a bar and restaurant in Virginia Beach, when she suddenly disappeared without taking her wallet, coat or phone with her. Ebong called police the next day to report an unresponsive woman in his apartment, and West was pronounced dead at the scene. The medical examiner initially determined she died of an accidental overdose after finding heroin and fentanyl in her system.
The next happened six months later in May 2021. The victim testified at trial she’d gone to Seaside Raw Bar at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront with friends and woke up the next day naked and feeling drugged in a strange man’s apartment. She eventually persuaded the man, who she identified in court as Ebong, to take her home. She didn’t report the crime until after she learned about West’s and Paton’s deaths.
The last incident occurred two months after the second, and also began at Seaside Raw Bar. Like West, Paton was out with friends when she suddenly disappeared. And just as in the West case, Ebong called 911 the next morning to report an unresponsive woman in his apartment who was later pronounced dead. Paton’s death also was initially ruled an accidental overdose after an autopsy showed she had heroin and fentanyl in her system.
Prosecutors argued at trial Ebong drugged the women after seeing them at bars and then took them home to sexually assault them. He was charged with second-degree murder in West’s and Paton’s deaths, but the jury chose to convict him of the lesser charge of manslaughter in both cases. The panel found him guilty of rape and object sexual penetration in the incident involving the surviving victim.
Kathy Paton’s lawsuit claims Norfolk police “obstructed justice” by not properly investigating West’s and Paton’s deaths, and concealing and failing to preserve evidence. The complaint also alleges the failures were due to the “instruction” of Reid, who “held a position of influence” with the department. The document doesn’t, however, state any specific actions Reid or the unnamed officer, who’s listed as “John Doe,” may have taken to obstruct the investigation.
The lawsuit also alleges that if police had investigated Ebong after West’s death, they would have discovered he had prior charges for sexual offenses against women. No details about the crimes were listed in the document, but a 2021 investigation by The Virginian-Pilot showed he’d been charged in two cases in Virginia Beach and one in Norfolk.
The first was in 2010 and involved a woman who claimed Ebong put his hands under her clothes and brandished a gun at her. Those charges were later withdrawn. The second involved an exotic dancer who told police Ebong demanded sex from her after hiring her, then stole money from her when she refused. He later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and felony theft. The third case accused Ebong of slapping a woman on the behind at a thrift store. Those charges were later withdrawn.
“By obstructing Ebong’s prosecution for (West’s death), the Norfolk Police Department enabled him to remain at-large in the Hampton Roads community to continue his modus operandi of drugging women at bars, removing them from the bars, taking them to his home, raping them, and sometimes killing them of an overdose from the chemicals he drugged them with,” the lawsuit said.
“The Norfolk Police Department shockingly failed to recognize that Ebong had previously called in the overdose of West and unceremoniously sent Kelsey Paton’s body to the medical examiner without recognizing the pattern of behavior and without preserving the evidence at the scene of her death.”
As a result of those failures, prosecutors were not able to obtain the evidence needed to convict Ebong of murder, and instead had to settle for a manslaughter verdict, the complaint said.
Jane Harper, [email protected]
