Raleigh Police said Copley was arrested hours after he fired a shotgun from inside his garage and hit the victim.
Advertisement
Chad Cameron Copley, 39, was charged with murder after police said he shot 20-year-old Kouren-Rodney Bernard Thomas with a shotgun on Singleleaf Lane early Sunday morning.
Before shooting Thomas shortly after midnight on Sunday, 39-year-old Copley called the police to alert them about ” a bunch of hoodlums out here racing”.
“I am locked and loaded”, he told the dispatcher.
In a case reminiscent of Trayvon Martin’s, a North Carolina neighborhood vigilante has been charged with first-degree murder for fatally shooting an unarmed young Black man who he called a “hoodlum”, news outlets have reported.
Jail records show Copley is being held on a murder charge.
Bamberg said the family “won’t be satisfied” until Copley is convicted. One teenage witness who lived at the home where the party took place said that nobody had guns nor was there any shouting or loud noises.
Thomas and a friend, David Walker, had been trying to get into a crowded party near Copley’s home on Sunday, Walker told the Raleigh News and Observer.
Raleigh police spokeswoman Laura Hourigan said community watch groups are organized by individual communities, but noted that the department “works with neighborhoods with and without community watch groups in the same ways, largely by sharing crime prevention information. and by encouraging all community members to call 911 to report any suspicious people, vehicles or activities”.
“You need to send PD a quickly as possible”, a man can be heard telling a dispatcher. “I’m on neighborhood watch”.
Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch volunteer and maintained he killed the unarmed Martin in self-defense. They were showing a firearm, so I fired a warning shot and we got somebody that got hit.
The dispatcher asked Copley to clarify, and he elaborated.
He continued, “I fired my warning shot like I’m supposed to by law…”
“I don’t know if they’re shot or not. I’m trying to protect myself and my family”. According to Copley, a white man, armed black males were outside of his home. “Didn’t do a damn thing to nobody”.
The female caller then gives the phone to a male caller who sounds like the man from the previous 911 call.
“All the killing, black kids, white kids, adults, I’m just exhausted”. “He did not have a firearm, and as far I know there is no evidence that anyone out there had any firearms”.
The operator asked who had come to his house.
Simone Thomas defended her son and said, “He wasn’t dressed when he left with sagging trousers or a do-rag or anything that people call hoodlum”.
At this morning’s news conference, Butler-Thomas talked about her two other sons that she has to “worry about now every day”. “Koury doesn’t like guns ― he wouldn’t even go paintballing”, she said.
The family of Kouren-Rodney Bernard Thomas has set up a gofundme page to raise money for his funeral expenses.
Advertisement
Denkins’ mother told reporters that, according to accounts from other people in the area of the shooting, her son was fleeing and “they couldn’t catch him, so they shot at him seven times”. For the past two years, she says, neighbors have been quick to scrutinize, stereotype and complain to their homeowner’s association.
