NORFOLK — When a body bag was pulled from a second-floor apartment in Ocean View late last year and carried down the wooden stairs, residents from nearby units gathered outside to watch.
Several police cars and fire trucks arrived that Sunday morning. A van from the medical examiner’s office drove up later.
A woman in a neighboring building was among the onlookers. She snapped pictures and recorded video on her cellphone.
That was Nov. 15, 2020. The location: 1216 Hillside Ave., an apartment building a couple of blocks from the beach.
The person found dead was 36-year-old Sheena West of Virginia Beach. The veterinary office worker and mother of a teenage son had disappeared the night before while at a Virginia Beach restaurant and bar with friends.
They said she left her phone and wallet behind and didn’t tell them she was leaving. Surveillance footage showed her exiting with an unknown man.
A medical examiner determined West suffered a fatal overdose of cocaine, heroin, fentanyl and alcohol. It was labeled accidental.
On July 11 — eight months after West died — the scene outside the Ocean View apartment building where her body was found was almost exactly the same, according to two residents.
Once again, police, firefighters and Medical Examiner’s Office staff arrived. And once again, a body bag was pulled from the same second-floor apartment. That time, the man who lived there, 43-year-old Michael Ebong, helped carry it.
The woman found dead in the second incident hasn’t been named publicly, but friends identified her as Kelsey Paton, 30, of Virginia Beach. A spokeswoman for the Medical Examiner’s Office said last week a cause and manner of Paton’s death haven’t been determined.
Paton was a native of Chesapeake and a former manager of Coastal Grill, an upscale Virginia Beach restaurant, according to friends. She took a job managing a Virginia Beach mechanical business when COVID-19 restrictions slowed things at the restaurant, they said.
The neighbor who took pictures and video the first time a body was removed from Ebong’s apartment recorded the second event, too, which also occurred on a Sunday morning.
While Norfolk police have declined to confirm the exact address from where the bodies were recovered, they provided incident reports for the address in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Pilot.
The report shows officers were called there the days both women’s bodies were recovered. Police declined, however, to provide 911 calls made from the residence, citing an ongoing investigation.
Late Thursday, the department issued a news release saying Ebong was being investigated in connection with both deaths and that both were believed to involve narcotics.
The release said Ebong was known to frequent two Virginia Beach restaurants: Seaside Raw Bar on Atlantic Avenue and Central at Shore on Red Tide Road. They asked anyone with information to contact police.
News releases from the department shortly after the bodies were recovered essentially reported the same facts — officers were called to a residence in the 1200 block of Hillside Avenue for a report of an unresponsive woman and that she was pronounced dead at the scene.
Both times they reported the incident was being investigated as an undetermined death. And both times they said no signs of foul play were detected.
Ebong is being held in the Norfolk city jail without bond. But his current charges have nothing to do with the two dead women found in his apartment.
He’s charged with a rape and abduction. The alleged victim from the May 22 incident didn’t come forward, however, until recently. Ebong was arrested and charged July 16.
A document in his court file says the alleged victim claims he drugged her, then took her to his place and raped her. The document goes on to say “detectives suspect this to be a pattern and NOT an isolated incident.”
During a court hearing Monday, Ebong said he planned to hire Norfolk attorney Josue Casanova. The attorney represents him in a pending misdemeanor case but said earlier this week he wasn’t aware of the new allegations.
It’s not the first time Ebong has been accused of assaulting a woman.
In two prior cases in Virginia Beach, he was charged with sexually assaulting a woman he drove to his home, and assaulting an exotic dancer he’d hired. He also has a pending case in Norfolk from May in which he’s accused of slapping a woman’s bottom in a thrift store.
In the first of his Virginia Beach cases, Ebong was charged with misdemeanor sexual battery. The woman told police he gave her a ride to his Virginia Beach home in March 2010, put his hands under her clothing and brandished a firearm at her, according to a court document.
And while the woman was described by police as “very believable” and “very afraid” in a court document, the charges were later dismissed.
Ebong was charged in the second Virginia Beach case in August 2013. The victim told police he hired her to do an exotic dance, then insisted she have sex with him. He demanded his money back when she refused.
The woman said Ebong grabbed her purse, took $160 from it, then pushed her against a wall. She was able to get her purse back and ran out the house with him chasing, the document said.
Ebong was arrested and ordered held at the city jail without bond. He was sent to Central State Hospital for a competency exam several weeks later after he began acting paranoid and delusional and refused to talk to a psychologist.
According to a six-page report from the hospital, Ebong was born in Nigeria and adopted by an American couple when he was 11. He did well in school and earned a bachelor’s degree in business from Norfolk State University, the report said, and later owned a business that ran group homes.
While Ebong denied having mental health problems, a relative told jail officials he’d been treated for depression and bipolar disorder but stopped taking his medication, the report said.
After a few weeks at the hospital, Ebong was determined to be competent and went back to jail. He pleaded guilty to assault and felony theft from a person in February 2014. Court records didn’t indicate his sentence.
The neighbor who took pictures and video the days the bodies were discovered at Ebong’s Ocean View apartment said he’d lived there for about a year and a half. She asked not to be identified out of fear of repercussions.
When the first woman died, Ebong didn’t say anything to neighbors, she said. But the second time, he went out of his way to talk to them about it. He told them the person who died was a young woman and that she’d overdosed.
“He was going around telling everyone he wasn’t going to be having any more parties because all these young people want to do is drugs,” she said. “(But) we never saw him have any parties.”
Another female neighbor who also asked not to be named because she fears Ebong said he told her the same thing.
Friends of West’s said they were stunned and upset when her death was ruled an accident.
“We know she didn’t accidentally overdose. We’ve known that for months. We just couldn’t prove it,” said Erin Ferguson, a longtime friend. “There were drugs in her system that she would have never touched.”
Cat Vaughan, another longtime friend, said West also would not have left the restaurant and bar she was at — Central Shore in Virginia Beach — without telling her friends and taking her wallet and phone.
Vaughan said West looked “wobbly” in the restaurant’s surveillance footage and appeared to be getting help walking out from the man next to her. She also believes the man is Ebong.
“I’m sure of it,” Vaughan said. “No doubt in my mind.”