Pleasanton high school trainer, charged with double murder, resented victims during rocky relationship, police say
The clock struck midnight on Feb. 20. Allen Swadley, driving down Lyle Drive in San Jose, had just turned 32 years old.
But it would be a birthday without celebration. A police squad car was behind him. Within the first few minutes of his birthday, he’d be handcuffed, en route to Dublin’s Santa Rita Jail, facing charges of double murder.
It had been a wild 48 hours for Swadley. After the killings of Lori Simonds and her son, Evan, in their home on the 3100 block of Joanne Circle, Swadley’s black 2025 Toyota Camry had been seen speeding away from the area. He’d then called in absent from work at a local high school, and headed down to Fresno on Feb. 19, where police spotted him at his mother’s house. Now, authorities had tracked him down again, this time with an arrest warrant, according to court records.
Police haven’t specified a motive for the double homicide, other than saying that Swadley had dated Lori’s daughter, and that the relationship ended roughly two months before the killings. The last three months of the relationship were rocky, and a point of contention was Swadley’s apparent resentment of Evan and Lori, authorities said.
On the day of the breakup, Lori’s daughter found a text message thread where Swadley had complained to friends about Lori, prompting a heated argument between the couple, authorities said.
Lori and Evan were killed around 10 a.m. on Feb. 18. A pool maintenance man was in the Simonds’ backyard, doing his job, when he heard four gunshots, a woman’s screams, and two more shots. He ran scared from the area, called 911, and refused to return to the property until police got there. The cops arrived at the home, walked through an open garage, and found the mother and son suffering from gunshot wounds in two different parts of the house, according to court records.
The victims were declared dead inside the home within the hour. Lori’s daughter, contacted at her work in the South Bay, told police Swadley was the only person she knew who both possessed firearms and knew where the Simonds kept a spare key hidden outside the home, police said in court filings.
To the Bay Area pro wrestling community, Evan Simonds was better known as “The Sex Hawk Lars Luger.” On his Instagram page, Simonds appears to relish in playing up his overly-confident persona. The page shows him posing in videos where Lars flexes for the camera, only to “realize” he’s facing the wrong direction. In another, Simonds dresses in a suit, performing as a mayoral candidate of “Slam-Town.”
His last video, shows two trainers magically changing his clothes by slapping him only to make him “disappear.” The performance and its caption, that “little did he know (Lars) would be ascending to another realm,” now takes on a tragically ironic meaning.
“Missing him so much,” one commenter wrote on a recent post.
An online fundraiser for the victims’ daughter/sister has raised nearly $85,000 as of Friday morning.
Swadley, a Fresno native, had been working as an athletic trainer for years. He was employed through Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, but contracted to work at Foothill High School in Pleasanton, authorities said. On Feb. 18, he reportedly called the school and explained his mother was sick and he couldn’t come in. Foothill High’s principal referred requests for comment to a district media portal, which promises “a member of our Communications Team will review your request and respond in writing via email within 1–2 business days,” and didn’t immediately respond to media inquiries.
Before his current job, Swadley had been employed at other Bay Area schools, most recently a high school in Fremont, according to public payroll records and Swadley’s Linkedin account. On his Linkedin page, Swadley has a single post, from three years ago, celebrating his completion of a master’s program at Fresno State University. In it, he seems eager to learn what the future has in store for him.
“I promise to make a positive impact and serve as an inspiration to our leaders of tomorrow. I aspire to become the best person I can be,” Swadley wrote. “I will one day share the fruits of my labor with those who helped me cultivate it as it is my turn to pay it forward.”