Steven Williams Jr. acknowledged shooting Norman Hollowell Jr., leaving jurors to decide whether the gunfire was justified or criminal.
NORFOLK, Va. — Steven Edward Williams Jr. told jurors that Norman Andrew Hollowell Jr. pointed a gun at his face inside a Norfolk apartment. Prosecutors answered with video, digital records and firearm evidence they said showed Williams was the aggressor. After nearly three hours of deliberation, the jury sided with the prosecution.
The June 18 verdict made the disputed claim of self-defense the defining legal issue in a case where the identity of the shooter was not in question. Williams, now 25, was convicted of second-degree murder and using a firearm in the commission of murder in Hollowell’s 2024 death. The trial required jurors to weigh Williams’ testimony about an alleged immediate threat against the physical and circumstantial evidence surrounding the encounter. The Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office said jurors rejected Williams’ account after hearing evidence over three days and found that the fatal shooting was malicious rather than legally justified.
Williams’ version placed the decisive moment inside Hollowell’s apartment. He testified that he had gone there expecting to collect a television associated with his older brother, who had previously lived with Hollowell. Once inside, Williams said, Hollowell told him the original television was gone but offered another set. Williams had also asked a cousin with a truck to come to the complex to help transport a television. When the cousin arrived with another man, Williams said Hollowell became angry at the appearance of two people he did not know.
Williams told jurors that Hollowell then pulled out a firearm and pointed it at his face. That alleged action, Williams contended, led him to shoot Hollowell. The prosecution could not show jurors video of what happened inside the room because the available doorbell footage covered the exterior. But prosecutors challenged Williams’ story through the evidence surrounding the shooting. Hollowell did have a gun on his person when he died, they said, yet forensic findings showed that his weapon had not been fired. Prosecutors also said no evidence apart from Williams’ own testimony established that Hollowell pointed the gun at him.
The firearm evidence was more definitive about who discharged a weapon. Investigators recovered spent casings from the apartment, and prosecutors said all of them were fired from Williams’ gun. Williams did not leave that firearm behind for police. Authorities said he later disposed of it, and investigators recovered it months afterward in Suffolk during an unrelated incident. The subsequent forensic work connected that gun to the casings from Hollowell’s apartment. The prosecution used those findings to support a sequence in which Williams alone fired during the encounter.
The events before the shooting gave jurors another basis for evaluating whether Williams unexpectedly encountered danger or went to the apartment under hostile circumstances. Prosecutors said Williams arrived at the Pretty Lake Avenue complex already carrying a gun and waited outside Hollowell’s unit for him to return. They also presented digital evidence showing that Williams had viewed Hollowell’s Facebook profile after a disputed television had been sold. Williams then made seven Messenger calls to Hollowell within about two hours, according to investigators.
That television had remained in Hollowell’s apartment after Williams’ older brother moved out in February 2024. Hollowell stored it for several months and asked Williams to retrieve it, prosecutors said. By early July, Hollowell had sold the set through Facebook Marketplace. Williams testified that he did not know before entering the apartment that it had been sold and maintained that his purpose was simply to pick it up. Prosecutors relied on the Facebook evidence to dispute that claim and to argue Williams knew about the sale before the confrontation.
Hollowell, 24, was occupied with other responsibilities as Williams tried to reach him. Prosecutors said Hollowell was caring for his young nephew while performing grocery deliveries. He eventually answered Williams and agreed to meet him at home. When he arrived at the apartment complex, Hollowell left his nephew locked in the car rather than taking him upstairs. He also sent his mother a text telling her he loved her. Those details did not establish what would happen inside the apartment, but they formed part of the timeline jurors heard about the final minutes before the two men met.
Exterior camera footage then supplied time markers around the confrontation. According to the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, Williams and Hollowell were inside for about 13 minutes before Williams shot Hollowell eight times. Williams’ cousin and the other man arrived approximately two minutes before the shooting. Afterward, the camera showed the two men leaving with a television and Williams running out behind them holding a gun. Prosecutors argued that the footage, considered with the calls and Williams’ armed arrival, was inconsistent with an innocent pickup that turned violent without warning.
What happened after the shooting also became part of the Commonwealth’s presentation. Prosecutors said Williams deactivated his Facebook account within hours and got rid of the firearm. Police responding to the 2100 block of Pretty Lake Avenue at about 7:20 p.m. on July 21, 2024, found Hollowell suffering from life-threatening gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office later said he died of blood loss in his living room. Williams was arrested Aug. 13 after detectives obtained warrants charging him with second-degree murder and use of a firearm.
The official July 21 date is supported by multiple Norfolk records. Police issued a notice July 22 identifying Hollowell and describing the shooting as having occurred the previous evening. The department repeated that date when announcing Williams’ arrest in August, and prosecutors again used July 21 in their detailed account of the conviction. A subsequent Law&Crime article listed July 24 as the incident date, but that differs from the consistently reported date in the primary Norfolk records.
At trial, the defense did not have to persuade jurors that Williams was uninvolved; Williams’ own testimony acknowledged that he fired. The dispute centered instead on the legal meaning of that act. Jurors had to consider his claimed fear of Hollowell’s gun alongside evidence that Williams had come armed, repeatedly contacted Hollowell, knew or may have known about the television dispute, and was the only person whose gun was shown to have fired. They also had to consider the absence of corroborating evidence for Williams’ assertion that Hollowell pointed his firearm.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi said after the verdict that jurors had been instructed on both the prosecution’s burden and the rules governing self-defense. He said they ultimately reached the same conclusion as prosecutors: Williams “was not acting in self-defense.” The verdict does not erase the fact that Hollowell had a gun; rather, it reflects the jury’s rejection of Williams’ explanation for why he fired eight shots under the circumstances presented at trial.
Judge Robert L. Foley, who presided over the June 16-18 trial, is scheduled to sentence Williams on Dec. 18. Prosecutors have said they will seek a term of confinement reflecting the harm caused by Hollowell’s death, but the available official account does not identify a specific sentence request. The guilty verdicts remain in place as Williams awaits that hearing.
Author note: Last updated October 20, 2026.