Police said after Thomas was hit, he was taken to WakeMed where he was pronounced dead.
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39-year-old Chad Cameron Copely has been charged with first degree murder for the “warning shot” shooting death of Kouren-Rodney Bernard Thomas and may face the death penalty as a result. On the page, she said Thomas was out celebrating a move to a new apartment on the night he was killed. Bamberg has represented the families of Walter Scott in North Charleston and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La., in two high-profile police shooting cases.
Copley said he was “on neighborhood watch”, a statement disputed by other residents of the Neuse Crossing community, who said the area doesn’t have an organized neighborhood watch. Let’s unpack all the ways Chad Cameron Copley (pictured above) screwed up, based on the evidence we know so far.
Thomas was unarmed, Bamberg said, and there was no evidence that anyone else outside – a number of people were at a house party in the neighborhood – had a weapon.
Copley: We have a lot of people outside of our house yelling and shouting profanities. “That’s your right”, Bamberg said.
“We’re saying listen to the audiotape. Sure, we’re young and we’re going to have fun sometimes but we should be able to make it home”. Thomas’ girlfriend, Amani Rainey, eulogized on Facebook. “What can I say. he was a good boy. he didn’t bother nobody”, Simone Thomas said.
‘I brought my kids down here when they were babies because I didn’t want to have my children raised in NY. The surrounding Census tract is about 60 percent white and nearly 30 percent black, with a median household income of about $76,000 – well above the state as a whole, according to 2014 Census estimates. “Everybody should be exhausted every day”, she said. “When is it going to end?” “I just want justice for all the parents, all the kids”, Thomas added.
“I lost somebody that I can’t even put in words how much they’ve taken from us”, said brother Kristian Williams. He turned his head back to me, and that’s when a shot went off.
After completing their initial investigation the incident, Raleigh Police Department detectives obtained an arrest warrant charging Copley with murder. “We can not have that, and it stops, if we have anything to do with it, today”. He demanded a police vehicle come quickly and told the dispatcher he was “locked and loaded”, ready to confront a group of “hoodlums, ” the Washington Post reported. Like Copley, he called 911 to report a “suspicious guy” in his Sanford, Florida neighborhood. “I yelled at them ‘please leave the premises.’ They were showing firearms, so I fired a warning shot and we got someone that got hit”, said one caller, who was later identified as Copley.
“I am going to have the neighborhood meet these hoodlums out here racing up and down the street.”
There’s hoodlums out here racing up and down the street. There is some vandalism and they have firearms. I’m gonna have the neighbors with me.
“You need to send PD as quickly as possible”, Copley told the 911 dispatcher, according to News Observer.
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.
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“He wasn’t dressed when he left the house with sagging trousers, or a doo rag, or anything people would call ‘hoodlum, ‘” she said.
