A Gun Law the NRA Opposes Could Have Saved Its Employee’s Life
T HIS STORY WAS PUBLISHED in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence. Subscribe to its newsletters.
One week in November 2008, Dawn Williams-Stewart showed up for work at the headquarters of the National Rifle Association, in Fairfax, Virginia, with bruises on her face. A close friend in the financial services division, where Dawn worked, saw her crying.
“Look at my mouth,” Dawn said, according to notes from a law enforcement investigation. Her husband, Antonio Stewart, had almost broken her jaw, she explained.
Dawn, who was 41, and among the NRA’s few Black employees, had been open with coworkers about her fear of Stewart; she was in an abusive relationship, and disclosed that he had threatened to kill her. She confided to a senior colleague, Sonya Rowling, who is now the NRA’s treasurer and chief financial officer, that Stewart said, “If I can’t have you, no one can.”
Dawn and Rowling had recently discussed getting a restraining order against Stewart. Dawn had been reluctant because she thought it might inflame him, so Rowling said the NRA would help when she was ready. On the day she saw Dawn’s jaw, Rowling insisted it was time to move forward and meet with Gordon Russell, then the NRA’s head of security. The three gathered together, and Dawn described her situation. Russell instructed her to get a restraining order. The NRA’s general counsel, the investigative notes say, sent Stewart a letter informing him that he was prohibited from the organization’s property.
It’s unclear whether Dawn followed through with the restraining order, but even if she had, that legal process can be convoluted and unreliable, especially when a gun is involved. What she needed was an Extreme Risk Protection Order, obtainable under a red-flag law. Such a statute expressly provides a person in Dawn’s position the opportunity to go before a judge and make a case under oath that her husband should be immediately disarmed because access to firearms puts her life in imminent danger.
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But in 2008, Maryland did not yet have a red-flag law on the books. About a week after Dawn appeared at work with bruises on her face, Stewart shot and killed her.
Ten years later, the NRA joined a chorus of Republicans, including then-President Donald Trump, in endorsing red-flag laws after the 2018 mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida. “We need to stop dangerous people before they act,” said Chris Cox, the NRA’s top lobbyist at the time. “So Congress should provide funding for states to adopt risk protection orders.” Nearly two dozen states eventually adopted such laws, and they serve as a centerpiece of reform for the Biden administration and Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
The laws are now perceived as a Democratic policy. Gun rights absolutists — and the Republican lawmakers who follow their lead — have increasingly attacked the statutes with false claims about rampant misuse. As resistance has built, the NRA, still the most prominent gun rights organization in the country, has reversed its position. In an op-ed published in the Daily Caller this September, Randy Kozuch, the organization’s current head lobbyist, wrote that red-flag laws “strip away gun owners’ rights without due process.” The column echoed a lawsuit that was filed last year in a Maryland federal court by the Second Amendment Foundation, a nonprofit that uses litigation to challenge gun restrictions. That case has the potential to render red-flag laws unconstitutional, but an investigation published this summer by The Trace and Rolling Stone demonstrated that it relies on a highly distorted narrative concocted to align with an agenda.
Dawn’s death received little news coverage beyond a small item in the Baltimore Sun. The article did not mention her employer, and the NRA never made a public comment about the victim or its connection to her. A red-flag law may or may not have saved her life, but without one, people in highly vulnerable situations are left exposed to the deadly power and efficiency of guns.
In an email, the NRA accused The Trace and Rolling Stone of “politicizing the tragic murder of a member of the NRA family in an attempt to support a specious argument about ‘red-flag’ laws.” The organization did not answer questions or engage with the specifics of a summary covering the details of this story.
What happened to Dawn is not unusual in America. In intimate partner homicide, studies show, the presence of a firearm leads to a fivefold increase in fatal outcomes. From 2014 to 2020, there was a 58 percent rise in such killings, according to an analysis by Reveal. In 2021, the year for which data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is most recently available, there were at least 1,477 intimate partner homicides, more than 70 percent of which were committed with a firearm. Of those — and consistent with figures from previous years — almost 80 percent of the victims were women.
Research suggests that the decision to pull the trigger tends to be impulsive, not premeditated; there are a multitude of unambiguous warning signs, including threats, but there is not typically a set plan to kill. The attempt to murder is usually sudden, and death often a matter of what a man has within his reach. Members of Dawn’s family and others close to her either declined to be interviewed or could not be reached for this story, but using thousands of pages of legal documents and investigative notes obtained by The Trace and Rolling Stone, an account of the final period of her life is now being told for the first time. It is, in many ways, an anatomy of a death foretold, and what can happen when, despite overt signals of impending danger, a person is left with no good options.
Serious Risk of Committing a Deadly Act
DAWN’S NRA COLLEAGUES had been leery of Stewart before she showed up to work with a bruised jaw. According to the investigative notes, her close friend in the accounting office said that Stewart was intensely possessive and, on weekday mornings, would clog Dawn’s voicemail with messages saying, “Don’t mess with me!” or “You should’ve been at work by now!” He would then call her office phone throughout the day. If Dawn said she couldn’t talk, he would call again; if she didn’t pick up, he would ring her cell.
The friend, whose name is being withheld because she no longer works at the NRA and could not be reached for comment, told law enforcement that Dawn had arrived at the office with bruises on previous occasions, and staff suspected abuse. Both the friend and Sonya Rowling had met Stewart a few times and found him to be cruel and disrespectful. Dawn’s colleagues could not understand what she saw in him.
Stewart was born in Baltimore on November 6, 1979. When he was six months old, his mother died from a brain aneurysm, according to a psychiatric evaluation from his case file. He was partly raised by his great uncle, a reverend, who was murdered when he was 15. He also lived for a time with an aunt, who, Stewart said, mentally and physically abused him. She beat him with extension cords, phone cords, and belts. At the age of eight, Stewart said, he was molested by his cousin. When he moved into foster care, his foster mother would say things like, “You ain’t my son, you son of a bitch.”
At the age of 15 or 16, Stewart attempted suicide for the first time by overdosing on Tylenol PM, he told the psychiatrist. In his early twenties, he tried to drive his truck off a bridge or a cliff — he couldn’t remember which.
During this period, he worked as a security guard, and at some point legally purchased a Bersa Thunder 380 semiautomatic pistol. He had an argument with his girlfriend at the time, retrieved the gun, and placed it on the living room table. He felt like his life was going nowhere. She called the police, who left after he displayed his security badge, he said. In 2002, Stewart registered his weapon with the state of Maryland, and obtained a permit to carry it.
Stewart admitted to the psychiatrist that he had a violent temper, and, when in a rage, would punch holes in walls. He drank heavily as an adult, and had a history of blackouts. He was later diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, Alcohol Dependence Disorder, and Unspecified Trauma and Stressor Related Disorder. He had narcissistic traits. After the killing, doctors evaluating Stewart’s mental health noted that he “appeared to lack empathy regarding the consequences of his alleged actions.”
Yet nothing that had happened in Stewart’s life would’ve prevented him from owning his gun, even though research has repeatedly demonstrated that his circumstances and behaviors placed him at serious risk of committing a deadly act. His menacing conduct toward Dawn appeared to be escalating. He was abusing alcohol, hardly working, and had ready access to a gun. His marriage was coming apart, and he blamed Dawn. “It’s like she just kicked me to the curb,” Stewart later told police. “You know, she wasn’t trying to meet me halfway or nothing.”
“Dawn Would Still Be Here”
DAWN AND STEWART MET at a Baltimore nightspot called Club Choices, a smoky venue that kept the lights dim, the music loud, and on Saturdays stayed open until daybreak. The couple got married in 2004. Sonya Rowling, the NRA CFO and treasurer, told law enforcement that before the relationship, Dawn was self-sufficient and had a stable life, and that after she got involved with Stewart she became a completely different person. By 2008, the couple was struggling with money, had two children — a baby named Rachel and a toddler, Antonio Jr., who everyone called A.J. — and had been through at least one eviction. That same year, the family moved to a home on Parkside Drive, in northeast Baltimore.
Around late October or early November, as the marriage became increasingly volatile, Dawn decided to move into the home of Wendy Palmer, a mutual friend of hers and Stewart’s from church. Wendy’s husband, Shon, drove to Parkside in his Ford Expedition to transport Dawn and some bags of clothes. “He’d beaten her up,” Shon recalls. “I saw the bruises on her.”
Because Dawn worked full-time at the NRA’s headquarters, Stewart had the kids during the week, and she had them at Wendy’s home, about 10 minutes away, on weekends. Around this time, Shon says, “everything escalated.” Stewart would drop by Wendy’s house unannounced, trying to keep an eye on Dawn. “He was stalking,” Shon remembers. Dawn told him that Stewart followed her to work, and cornered Dawn in the NRA’s parking garage, where they had a confrontation over money. She said she had to call for security, who had to restrain him and force him to leave.
Dawn’s anxiety intensified. Kenneth Bayes, now the NRA’s director of member programs, happened to post a Glock 45 handgun for sale on the organization’s intranet bulletin board. According to investigative notes, Dawn contacted Bayes to inquire about purchasing the firearm. He told her it was a big weapon, and perhaps not ideal for a woman. She said she didn’t care, but did not buy it. In retrospect, Bayes told law enforcement, it was clear that she was feeling threatened.
As the weeks went by, Dawn found a suitable apartment, and, using Rowling as a reference, was able to secure it. On Wednesday, November 26, the day before Thanksgiving, Dawn and her friend from accounting got out of work around noon. Dawn said she planned to move into her new place on Monday. The friend told her to stay out of trouble and be careful.
Thanksgiving passed without incident. On Friday or Saturday night, as Shon remembers it, Stewart knocked on Wendy’s door. Dawn wasn’t there, and he demanded to know why. “He asked Wendy if she gave Dawn a curfew,” Shon says. “Then he called her phone and she didn’t answer. So he got the feeling that she was out with somebody.”
On Sunday, November 30, Dawn brought the children to see the Ice Capades skating show. Normally, either Wendy or Dawn’s daughter from a previous relationship, 23-year-old Litia, would drop off the kids at the Parkside home. But on this day, after the event, Dawn decided to do it herself. Stewart was there and had been drinking vodka and beer. Around 8:00 p.m., Dawn attempted to call Litia. She didn’t pick up, but soon called her mother back. Stewart answered, but Litia could hear Dawn in the background. “Hang up and call the police!” Dawn screamed. “He just punched me in the face.”
Stewart hung up, and Litia rang the phone again. When no one answered, she dialed 911. “My mom just called,” she said, according to the transcript, “and I believe that her husband just punched her in the face.”
Litia also called Wendy, and explained what was happening at the Parkside house. Wendy was down the street with Shon, visiting family. They rushed over and could hear screaming coming from the house. Wendy knocked on the front door. Stewart asked who it was and yelled to wait a minute. He opened the door and shoved A.J. outside. Wendy caught a glimpse of Dawn standing in the kitchen, near the steps that led to the basement, crying hysterically. Later, in court, she recalled Dawn almost chanting, “Wendy help me, he gon kill me. Wendy help me, he gon kill me.” Then Stewart shut the door.
Shon told Wendy to call the police, but before she could, Stewart called her. Shon told law enforcement that he recalled hearing him say, “Didn’t I tell you what I was gonna do if you call the police?” Shon snatched the phone away from his wife and confronted Stewart, who hung up on him. Then Shon contacted the police.
“The kids are in the house and dude is beating the lady up in the house and she’s one of my wife’s girlfriends,” he said, according to a transcript. “I can hear her screaming outside the door inside the house from outside.”
Stewart had pulled Dawn down into the basement. He ripped out her hair extensions as they struggled, leaving them strewn about the floor.
Three police officers arrived at the house. Wendy informed them that Stewart had a gun. They could hear the wailing and commotion as they approached the front door. One officer began kicking it, until it gave way on the fourth attempt. About a second later, everyone heard the amplified cracks of multiple shots fired in rapid succession. The police and the Palmers scrambled for cover. A television blared in the background. Stewart slipped out a backdoor. Rachel, the baby, was on the living room sofa. An officer eventually spotted her foot and brought her outside.
Dawn Williams-Stewart was lying in the basement on her stomach. She’d managed to grab a piece of laundry, and held it against her wound. A single bullet had entered her body between her breast and belly button, speeding toward the lower part of her liver and obliterating it, before traveling through her stomach cavity, the large bowel, the colon, the small bowel, and the mesentery. Unimpeded, it cut through Dawn’s abdominal aorta, the main artery of the body, which disseminates blood from the heart. Finally, the bullet came to a halt in front of her spine. Dawn’s abdomen filled with a liter and a half of blood, and she bled to death, alone on a cold floor.
When the NRA’s director of human resources informed Sonya Rowling that something had happened to Dawn, the first thing that came to her mind was that her husband had killed her. A former NRA employee recalls, “There was a deathly scary silence at the office, with people crying for days.” The killing was a devastating event for many staffers; the NRA had been swept up in it. But the public had no idea, insulating the organization from scrutiny.
Stewart maintained the shooting was an accident, that he only wanted to kill himself, and he’d accidentally pulled the trigger when the police startled him. A jury sent him to prison for 50 years. Meanwhile, his story has not changed, and he emphatically denies the allegations made by Dawn’s colleagues, or that he was ever physically abusive toward her. He says he never stalked, followed, or harassed Dawn, either. “I would never take away the mother of my children, who I loved dearly,” Stewart insists. “I wanted to build an environment for them that I didn’t have. Dawn is the angel I chose to have my kids with, and she’ll always be a part of me. I’m very remorseful and sorry.”
At the time of Dawn’s death, Stewart says, he had been struggling with severe depression for many years. “I was at the end of my rope,” he recalls. In his memory, on November 30 he was drunk and placed the pistol to his own head, but the firearm jammed until it suddenly didn’t. Later, he learned his wife was dead.
Stewart wishes he had gotten professional help; it was clear he had entered the zone of imminent danger, in which the addition of the wrong element could create an explosion. “If it wasn’t for me bringing the gun into the picture,” Stewart believes, “Dawn would still be here.”