A jury found Steven Edward Williams Jr. guilty after prosecutors tied phone records, doorbell video and firearm evidence to the fatal confrontation.

NORFOLK, Va. — A Norfolk jury convicted 25-year-old Steven Edward Williams Jr. of second-degree murder and using a firearm in the commission of murder after prosecutors presented digital records, video and ballistic evidence to challenge his claim that he killed 24-year-old Norman Andrew Hollowell Jr. in self-defense.

The June 18 verdict followed a three-day trial focused not on whether Williams fired the shots but on why he did so. Williams testified that Hollowell pointed a gun at his face during a confrontation inside Hollowell’s Ocean View apartment. Prosecutors argued the evidence showed a different sequence: Williams arrived armed, waited for Hollowell, repeatedly contacted him after viewing his Facebook profile and left minutes after the shooting with a gun in his hand while two other men carried a television from the apartment. Jurors deliberated for nearly three hours before rejecting the self-defense argument and convicting Williams on both counts.

The confrontation grew out of a dispute involving a large television that Williams’ older brother had left behind when he moved out of Hollowell’s Pretty Lake Avenue apartment in February 2024. Prosecutors said Hollowell stored the television for several months and asked Williams to retrieve it. When it remained at the apartment, Hollowell eventually sold it through Facebook Marketplace in early July. The two men had known each other since childhood because Hollowell was close friends with Williams’ older brother. What began as a disagreement over property would later become central to the prosecution’s explanation of why Williams went to the apartment armed on July 21, 2024.

Digital evidence became an important part of that explanation. Norfolk prosecutors said investigators determined Williams viewed Hollowell’s Facebook profile on the day of the shooting, after the television had already been sold. Williams then called Hollowell seven times through Facebook Messenger during a roughly two-hour period. At the time, Hollowell was caring for his young nephew while completing grocery deliveries. He eventually answered Williams and agreed to meet him at the apartment. Before going upstairs, prosecutors said, Hollowell left his nephew secured in his vehicle and sent his mother a text saying, “I love you.”

Williams gave jurors a different account of what he understood before the meeting. He testified that he did not know the original television was gone and believed he was contacting Hollowell simply to retrieve it. According to Williams, Hollowell said inside the apartment that the original television was no longer there but offered another one instead. Williams also said he had asked a cousin with a truck to come to the apartment so the television could be moved. That cousin arrived with another man, and Williams testified that Hollowell became angry when he saw the two strangers approaching his home.

The critical part of Williams’ defense concerned what happened next inside the apartment, beyond the view of the exterior camera. Williams testified that Hollowell produced a gun and pointed it at his face, prompting him to shoot. Prosecutors acknowledged that Hollowell had a firearm on his person when he died, but they said forensic evidence established that Hollowell never fired it. Investigators also found that all of the spent cartridge casings recovered from the apartment had been fired by Williams’ gun. Prosecutors said there was no additional evidence supporting Williams’ claim that Hollowell had pointed his firearm at him.

Other evidence allowed jurors to reconstruct the minutes surrounding the gunfire even though the shooting itself occurred indoors. Prosecutors said Williams had already arrived at the Pretty Lake Avenue complex armed and waited outside until Hollowell returned. Thirteen minutes after Williams and Hollowell entered the unit, Hollowell was shot eight times. Williams’ cousin and the other man had arrived about two minutes before the shooting. Doorbell-camera footage later showed those two men leaving with a television while Williams ran behind them carrying a gun, according to the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office.

The investigation also extended beyond the apartment. Prosecutors said Williams deactivated his Facebook account within hours of the shooting and later discarded the gun. Police did not immediately recover the weapon. It was found months later in Suffolk during an unrelated incident, allowing investigators to compare it with evidence from Hollowell’s apartment. Authorities said the forensic examination connected the recovered gun to all of the cartridge casings at the scene. That finding supported the prosecution’s contention that the gunfire came solely from Williams’ weapon.

Norfolk police had been called to the 2100 block of Pretty Lake Avenue at about 7:20 p.m. on July 21, 2024. Officers found Hollowell critically wounded, and he was pronounced dead at the scene. Prosecutors later said he died from blood loss on his living room floor. Police obtained warrants charging Williams with second-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of murder. A Norfolk Police Special Operations Team arrested him on Aug. 13, about three weeks after the killing. Early police statements did not describe the dispute over the television; those details emerged later through the prosecution and trial evidence.

The dates in the official Norfolk records also clarify a discrepancy in some later accounts of the case. The Norfolk Police Department’s initial homicide notice, its arrest announcement and the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office all identify July 21, 2024, as the date of the shooting. A later Law&Crime report described the incident as occurring on July 24. The primary city records consistently place the shooting on July 21, when police said officers were dispatched to Pretty Lake Avenue shortly after 7:20 p.m.

At trial, the jury had to decide whether Williams reasonably acted to protect himself or whether the circumstances showed a malicious killing rather than lawful self-defense. Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi said after the verdict that jurors had considered both the prosecution’s burden and the rules governing self-defense before reaching their decision. He said the jury concluded Williams “was not acting in self-defense.” The prosecution emphasized the advance phone contacts, Williams’ armed arrival, the timing captured on the doorbell camera, the removal of the television and the firearm evidence as parts of a single sequence surrounding Hollowell’s death.

The verdict transformed a case that began as an active homicide investigation in July 2024 into a conviction nearly two years later. The Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office said Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney J. Drew Fairbanks and Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Williams S. Maydosz prosecuted the case, while Norfolk Police Sgt. Matthew M. Nordan led the investigation. Judge Robert L. Foley presided over the June 16-18 trial. Williams now awaits sentencing rather than another determination of guilt, while the prosecution has said it will seek a punishment reflecting the harm caused by Hollowell’s killing.

Foley is scheduled to sentence Williams on Dec. 18. As of Oct. 20, no sentence has been imposed, and the available official record does not state what specific term prosecutors will request. The two convictions — second-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of murder — remain the central outcome of the jury trial.

Author note: Last updated October 20, 2026.