NORFOLK, Va. (Tribune News Service) — Zquan Steeps left the tiniest bit of himself where a gunman burst into the home of a 20-year Navy veteran and shot her dead while her 9-year-old son watched.

But his DNA at the crime scene wasn’t enough to prosecute him for murder.

Steeps had been charged with second-degree murder and illegally using a gun, accused of shooting Charlene Ryals in December 2016 inside her Roland Park house. But on Thursday, prosecutor Shavaughn Banks requested all charges against him be dropped, and District Judge Joseph Lindsey did just that. Banks said police need to do more investigating to strengthen the case.

“We do not feel we could successfully proceed,” she said.

Steeps is expected to get out of jail Thursday afternoon.

It was a tough case to begin with. For years, police had “nothing” to go on, Banks said. Then, in June 2019, they caught a break. Steeps had submitted his DNA to Pennsylvania officials for an unrelated criminal case. It matched DNA Norfolk police had collected from Ryals’ front door handle. He was charged and extradited to Norfolk.

There was also a witness: her 9-year-old son. He saw everything.

This is what he told police:

Ryals’ murder started with her trying to help someone. Around 8:30 p.m. on Dec. 4, 2016, a woman knocked on the door of her house in the 500 block of Garren Avenue. She told Ryals her car had broken down and asked if she could use her phone. When Ryals turned away to get the phone, a man and a second woman wearing masks burst into her house.

Then the man shot Ryals seven times and fled.

As his mom was dying, the 9-year-old boy called 911.

Paramedics took Ryals to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, where a doctor pronounced her dead, homicide detectives wrote in search warrant affidavits. During an autopsy, medical examiner Elizabeth Kinnison determined she died from multiple gunshot wounds.

Norfolk police have declined to comment on a possible motive for the killing and would not say whether detectives believe Steeps was the gunman or involved in another way.

Ryals had just finished a 20-year nursing career in the Navy and was getting ready to go on a big family trip to Disney World for the holidays, her relatives said in 2016. She had a 15-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son at the time of her death, according to her mother, Teresa Campbell.

Ryals went to high school in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in the mid-1990s, where she played volleyball, ran track and cross country, was on the debate team and was prom queen, Campbell added. After graduating, she joined the Navy.

Why would someone kill her? The only explanation family members could think of in December 2016 was someone tried to rob her and things went bad.

“I don’t understand this at all,” her sister, Chanell Ware, said. “She didn’t bother anybody.”

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