Neighborhood Watch Vigilante May Face Death Penalty For “Warning Shot” Killing

By Bob Owens

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.

A North Carolina homeowner has been charged with fatally shooting a man with a shotgun blast that police said was fired from inside his garage.

Just minutes before Kouren-Rodney Bernard Thomas, 20, was fatally shot, 911 dispatchers got a call from someone claiming to be on the “neighborhood watch” and complaining about “hoodlums” outside his house.

“We’ve got a bunch of hoodlums out here racing,” the man can be heard on audio from a 911 call to the Raleigh Police Department. “I am locked and loaded. I’m going to secure my neighborhood.”

Minutes later, Thomas was dead and now 39-year-old Chad Cameron Copley is charged with first degree murder and being held in the Wake County Detention Center.

If convicted, Copley could face the death penalty.

Here’s the language of North Carolina’s statute defining first degree murder.

A murder which shall be perpetrated by means of a nuclear, biological, or chemical weapon of mass destruction as defined in G.S. 14-288.21, poison, lying in wait, imprisonment, starving, torture, or by any other kind of …Read the Rest

Source:: Bearing Arms