When the System Moves Fast for Custody and Slow for Everything Else
A missing mother, a man who pleaded guilty to brutally assaulting her, seven firearms authorities say he was barred from possessing, and a family court finally confronting an immediate question.
By Michael Phillips | Family & State
The Ruling
A Montgomery County judge moved fast on Friday — faster than almost anything else in this case has moved. In an emergency hearing, the judge granted a member of Antoinette Forbes’ family temporary custody of her 10-year-old son and denied a competing custody petition from the boy’s father, Russell Ashford, without prejudice, meaning he can refile if his circumstances change. The judge was explicit that this was an emergency decision, not a ruling on Ashford’s fitness as a parent.
Forbes has been missing since Sept. 4, when she vanished from her Northwest D.C. home near American University, leaving her phone, wallet, car and dog behind; a friend who went to check on her found the door unlocked. D.C. police are publicly treating this as a missing persons case. A source close to the investigation has told 7News that a homicide detective is now involved — but 7News’s own reporting is careful to note that does not mean police have determined Forbes is dead, and no one has been charged in connection with her disappearance.
The 2021 Assault
“Prosecutors later told a judge there had been an earlier, unreported incident too — one witnessed by the couple’s son and a nanny — in which Ashford told Forbes, ‘I will kill you.’”
Ashford pleaded guilty to first-degree assault against Forbes in 2021. According to court records and prosecutors, he threw her against a staircase and took her phone when she tried to call police, then threw her onto the kitchen floor and struck her head against it at least a dozen times until she lost consciousness. A neighbor told investigators Forbes was lying motionless while Ashford kept punching her. She suffered severe facial injuries and permanent damage to her hand. According to a statement of probable cause, Ashford told the responding officer he had “just beat up his ex.” Prosecutors later told a judge there had been an earlier, unreported incident too — one witnessed by the couple’s son and a nanny — in which Ashford told Forbes, “I will kill you.”
Prosecutors asked for four years in prison. In April 2022, Judge David Lease sentenced Ashford to 15 years with all but nine months suspended, followed by five years of supervised probation.
The July Hearing
That should have been close to the end of the story. Instead, on July 9 of this year — about two months before Forbes disappeared — Ashford was back in front of Judge Lease, asking him to grant probation before judgment, a disposition that would remove the guilty finding from his record, and to end his probation early. His attorney argued he’d completed an abuser intervention program, restitution and ongoing therapy.
Forbes showed up and fought it. She told the court she’d had three surgeries on her eye and still couldn’t see properly, that she had a titanium plate in her cheek she could feel, that her finger had never healed right. She disputed the defense’s claim that the 2021 attack was an isolated incident and described times Ashford wouldn’t leave her home even after she told him she felt unsafe: “I would even say to him, ‘I feel unsafe now,’ and he still wouldn’t leave.” Prosecutors opposed the request too, telling Lease the state believed Ashford “continued to pose a danger to her.”
“Prosecutors opposed the request too, telling Lease the state believed Ashford ‘continued to pose a danger to her.’”
Lease split the difference. He granted the probation before judgment but denied ending probation early, keeping the no-hostile-contact condition in place: “If he has hostile contact, we can pull him in as quickly as possible if that does happen.” Eight weeks later, Forbes was gone.
“Eight weeks later, Forbes was gone.”
The Custody History
“A system that started with a wide berth of protection and, hearing by hearing, narrowed it.”
The criminal case isn’t the only place where restrictions on Ashford loosened over time. A 2021 emergency custody order gave Forbes sole legal and physical custody of their son and barred Ashford from any contact with her or the child. By 2024, a consent order had replaced that with unsupervised access and parenting time. Court records reviewed by 7News show the arrangement kept generating friction: in January 2025, Forbes’ attorney sent Ashford a letter accusing him of repeatedly crossing boundaries, including entering her home after she told him not to, and warned that the conduct could amount to a probation violation. Those were allegations from Forbes’ attorney, not judicial findings — but they trace the same arc as the criminal case: a system that started with a wide berth of protection and, hearing by hearing, narrowed it.
The Firearms
Ashford was arrested in Beaver County on a Montgomery County probation-violation warrant. The state’s attorney’s office did not publicly specify the alleged violation; Beaver County District Attorney Nate Bible said his understanding was that Ashford’s travel out of Pennsylvania and into the Maryland/D.C. area triggered it, and that license plate readers were used to track his truck. (A separate report has attributed the trip to an attempt to pick up his son from a summer camp at American University in July — a detail not confirmed by the warrant itself.) He was found with the couple’s son in a car in Brighton Township; the boy was released to family.
Just before Ashford’s scheduled extradition hearing, Pennsylvania State Police filed seven new felony counts against him for illegally possessing firearms — two pistols, two shotguns and three rifles, allegedly stored at the home of a woman he’d been dating on and off.
“This was the underlying charge that prohibited him from possessing a firearm,” Bible said, referring to the 2021 assault conviction. Those weapons counts are allegations, not an adjudicated fact — Ashford is due back in a Beaver County courtroom Sept. 28 for a preliminary hearing. But if they hold up, the question is straightforward: a man authorities say was legally barred from owning firearms had seven of them, in another state, and was only found out because investigators tracking a missing woman happened to be watching his truck.
What’s Next
“Over four years, a documented, violence-heavy record moved steadily toward less restriction.”
For now, the boy is with family. His mother is still missing, and D.C. police say the case remains a priority even as they’ve released no new public details about what happened to her. Ashford’s gun-charges hearing comes at the end of the month; only after that is resolved does the extradition process to Maryland resume. Friday’s custody order stands, but the denial of Ashford’s petition was without prejudice, meaning he has not been barred from returning to court to seek custody if his circumstances change.
The larger question sits underneath all of it: over four years, a documented, violence-heavy record moved steadily toward less restriction — from no-contact to unsupervised parenting time, from a 15-year sentence to a conviction effectively removed from his record — right up until the woman at the center of it disappeared. Nobody, including the family court, custody records, or the reporting so far, has fully explained how that happened.
Reporting for this piece draws on WJLA/7News coverage bylined to Thomas Mates and Cassie Schirm, syndicated widely across Gray and Sinclair-affiliated stations, along with CBS News Pittsburgh’s interview with Beaver County District Attorney Nate Bible. One detail is worth flagging rather than resolving: WJLA’s court reporting describes Ashford as having pleaded guilty to first-degree assault in 2021, while a public statement from Forbes’ sister, Aileen Forbes, described him as convicted “by a jury” — this piece adopts the more specific, repeatedly corroborated court reporting (guilty plea) rather than her public phrasing, and that hasn’t been independently checked against the Montgomery County docket. The Pennsylvania weapons charges are pending allegations, not convictions. D.C. police have publicly classified Forbes’ disappearance as a missing persons case; a homicide detective’s involvement in the investigation, per a source close to it, has not been characterized by police or 7News as a determination that Forbes is dead. Ashford has not been charged in connection with her disappearance.
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