Phillip Brent said he was awoken early one April morning by word someone had broken into his home in an upscale Atlanta suburb. He was away, so he quickly dialed up video from the home’s surveillance cameras on his phone.
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Brent said the video showed a masked man smashing through a back door with a sledgehammer. The intruder, who appeared armed with a crowbar, eventually left and pulled off his mask. Brent said he instantly recognized the face on the video.
He said it was a neighbor, Austin Lanz, 27; the same man the FBI said killed a Pentagon police officer without warning or provocation Tuesday on a Metro bus platform outside the military headquarters. Lanz also was killed.
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Brent said the April break-in, which resulted in Lanz’s arrest, was the culmination of a long campaign of harassment by Lanz against him and his former fiancee, Eliza Wells. The couple didn’t know Lanz personally and still don’t fully grasp the reasoning behind his fixation on them.
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Brent and Wells, both 23, said the encounters were by turns menacing and bizarre, offering a glimpse of the man who carried out such a confounding attack at the Pentagon. The two said they were fearful of Lanz, but also deeply concerned about him and his mental health.
What triggered his attack outside the Pentagon also remains unknown. In a statement released by Lanz’s family, his relatives offered condolences to the family of George Gonzalez, the slain Pentagon police officer, saying they were “sorry and heartbroken.” In an interview, the family’s attorney, Jimmy Berry, said the family knows of no motive for the attack.
“The last few months of Austin’s life were overcome with many mental health challenges,” the statement read. “Unfortunately, despite time spent in the criminal justice system with their special requirements, his hospital stays and numerous professional mental health evaluations, Austin did not receive any official diagnosis, therefore, he was unable to sufficiently deal with his mental health nor get the help he so desperately needed.”
Slain Pentagon officer was attacked Tuesday without provocation, FBI says
After Lanz’s April arrest, he said police planes were flying over his neighborhood and law enforcement had been tracking his phone, according to an arrest warrant. Soon after the arrest, he was accused of violently attacking sheriff’s deputies in jail.
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Lanz came to Virginia both to work and to undergo a mental health evaluation, Berry said.
Berry said Lanz had only been in the D.C. area just days when he stepped off a bus outside the Pentagon. The FBI said Lanz stabbed Gonzalez, before taking the officer’s gun and shooting Gonzalez and then himself.
“It doesn’t seem like anyone had to get killed … if he had just got the help he needed,” Brent said.
Mysterious notes
Brent and Wells moved into a red brick home in the Chestnut Hills neighborhood in Cobb County, Ga., in the summer of 2019. Things were quiet until around December of that year, when Brent checked his mail one day.
Inside, he said there was a folded piece of computer paper. When he opened it, he found himself staring at an image of hardcore pornography. A message — he couldn’t recall what — was scrawled across it in Sharpie marker.
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Brent said he tossed the paper in the trash, thinking it was a neighborhood kid pulling a prank.
But the photos continued to show up in his mailbox, and things grew stranger. A third photo that was placed in the mailbox around May 2020 featured a graphic image of a woman in a tiara. A toy tiara was also left.
“The combination was highly disturbing,” Wells said.
The couple called police.
Wells said officers told them there wasn’t much they could do and recommended the couple install surveillance cameras if they were worried about their safety. Brent and Wells did just that. Cobb County police declined a request for comment.
In July 2020, Brent said he awoke one Sunday morning to find an apple juice bottle with a cigarette in it leaning up against his garage door. The fact that someone had been on his property prompted Brent to spend hours scrolling through surveillance footage.
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Brent said he eventually found footage of Lanz slipping something in his mailbox in the dead of night while he was walking his dog. Then, he said, he found footage of Lanz depositing the apple juice bottle.
Lanz, the son of a construction executive, lived in a white house that backed up to Brent and Well’s home. Brent and Wells said they had never formally been introduced to Lanz and never spoke with him. Berry said Lanz had worked for his father and held other jobs.
They weren’t surprised to see Lanz on the video.
“We had already expected it was him,” Brent said of Lanz. “We had to drive by his house often. We were going by on walks. Every time we passed by he was outside smoking a cigarette or would be standing there and would give us the most creepiest unsettling looks … and wave at us.”
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Lanz’s parents and siblings have not responded to calls and social media messages for comment over multiple days. No one answered when a reporter knocked on the Lanz’s door in Acworth, Ga. An attorney for Lanz in the break-in case did not respond to numerous requests for comment.
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After discovering the footage, Brent and Wells called police again.
Officers talked with Lanz’s parents, who wanted to apologize, Wells said. Wells walked to their home and found Lanz and his parents outside. Wells said Lanz’s parents said they were disturbed by what had happened and promised to get Lanz therapy. It’s unclear if he ever saw a therapist afterward.
Wells said the police officers wanted Lanz to apologize to her. Lanz, who was a tall man, sat slumped in a chair, Wells said.
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“The police officers said, ‘Austin, have you ever met this girl?’ Wells recalled. “He said, ‘No I haven’t.’ So they were like, ‘Why would you have any reason to start doing things?’ He said, ‘Well, I mean I can see her through her bathroom window.’”
Wells said the final statement was chilling.
The bathroom Wells used was visible from Lanz’s home, so she kept the blinds closed after that. Wells said she thought of the conversation every time she stood in the bathroom getting ready.
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Wells said she went to Cobb County Magistrate Court the next week to look into seeking a restraining order, but was told by a court official there was not a sufficient pattern of behavior to warrant one. The court clerk did not respond to a request for comment on that characterization.
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Wells and Brent eventually broke off their engagement and Wells moved out of the home in October 2020, she said. Brent said pornographic images and other strange things periodically continued to show up at the residence through this past spring.
On April 18, Brent said he had just gotten into bed around midnight when he got an alert someone was at his house. He pulled up a surveillance video feed on his phone and saw Lanz taping a large sign to the front door.
It had a cryptic message Brent said he did not understand: “I’m done wondering for real. Wut is the point of that.”
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Brent called police once more. Officers issued Lanz a trespass warning, saying he would be arrested if he violated it, according to a police report about the incident. Brent said the incident had shaken him and he decided to leave and stay with his sister.
A final encounter
The break-in at Brent’s home occurred less than a week later, on April 24.
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Brent said Lanz was inside the home for about 15 minutes, the surveillance video showed. All of the lights were turned on “as if Lanz was searching the residence for someone or something,” police wrote in a report.
Brent’s bed was in disarray and the blinds in the bathroom were cracked open, the police report states. Lanz carried what appeared to be a crowbar inside the home, police wrote. As the door already had been breached they said it indicated “he planned on having further need for the object.”
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Nothing was taken.
“It felt pretty obvious his intention was to do harm to us,” Brent said.
When police responded that night, they found Lanz outside his home in the rain smoking a cigarette, according to the police report. Officers arrested Lanz on burglary and trespassing charges.
Lanz told them he didn’t take anything and talked about planes flying over the neighborhood and fears of his phone being tracked. He was taken to the Cobb County jail.
In the intake area, Lanz allegedly “without warning or provocation” attacked two Cobb County Sheriff’s deputies, according to an arrest warrant. One was left with a dislocated thumb and the other suffered a bone chip and a torn ACL. Lanz damaged one of the officer’s Tasers, and it took multiple deputies to restrain him, the warrant states.
As the deputies wrestled with him, Lanz told them he wanted to fight all of them and called them “gay” for ganging up on him, according to an arrest warrant. The warrant states he asked for them to remove his restraints so he could fight them one-on-one.
Lanz was charged with six additional counts in connection with the incident, including two counts of assault on a law enforcement officer.
On May 12, Cobb County Magistrate Judge Michael McLaughlin lowered Lanz’s bond and then granted it, according to court records. As a condition, the judge ordered Lanz to undergo a mental health and substance abuse evaluation within 30 days of his release. He also ordered Lanz to seek employment and avoid possessing guns.
McLaughlin said he could not comment on his bond decision because of judicial ethics guidelines, but Brent and Wells, who attended the hearing, said he told attorneys that Lanz did not have a criminal record so he didn’t feel he should be held.
Brent and Wells said they were disappointed by the judge’s decision, given the alleged violent conduct Lanz had exhibited.
Latonia Hines, spokeswoman for the DA’s office, declined to comment on most factual aspects of Lanz’s cases, including what position the office took on bond. Bond records were not immediately available from the court.
“We don’t have much of a comment right now,” Hines said. “It’s sadness for the victims and the officer who died.”
Lanz was not released from the jail until July 18, said Kenya Jackson, pretrial division manager for Cobb County Magistrate Court. The next day, court records show, a judge granted Lanz a bond modification that allowed him to move to Virginia. Lanz planned to be working for his father, Berry said.
Berry said Lanz arrived in the D.C. area a day or two before Aug. 3, when the FBI said he stepped off a Metro bus and “immediately, without warning” attacked Gonzalez. Video captured by journalist Dave Statter in the minutes after the incident shows Pentagon police officers with their guns drawn swarming around the bus with a man lying next to it. The FBI is still probing the motive.
George Gonzalez, proud New Yorker and police officer, had served his country since graduating from high school
Jackson said the 30-day period in which Lanz was required to submit the mental health evaluation had not expired at the time of the tragedy and her office had not yet received it.
A police officer was fatally stabbed in a violent encounter outside the Pentagon on Aug. 3. The officer’s alleged assailant was also killed. (Hadley Green/The Washington Post)
Brent and Wells said they felt there were missed opportunities that could have changed the course of events. They wonder if the tragedy could have been averted if Wells was granted a restraining order, Lanz was denied bond or if authorities had intervened sooner to get him help.
“While we sit in great disbelief over the events that occurred and continue to mourn for lives lost, we are hopeful that this tragedy can help bring greater awareness and change to the growing mental health crisis in our country,” Lanz’s family said in its statement.
Sharon Dunten and Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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