A South Carolina convenience store owner has been charged with murder after shooting a 14-year-old he suspected of stealing water on Sunday, police said.
Rick Chow, 58, who owns a Shell gas station in Columbia, chased Cyrus Carmack-Belton down the street outside the store before fatally shooting him at around 8 p.m., the Richland County Sheriffs’ Department said during a Monday press conference, according to local WIS-TV.
“It’s senseless, it doesn’t make sense,” Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said. “You have a family that’s grieving. We have a community that’s grieving over a 14-year-old who was shot.”
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The sheriff’s office, which reviewed surveillance footage of the incident, maintained that Chow’s claim the boy was attempting to shoplift was false.
“Regardless, even if he had shoplifted four bottles of water — which is what he initially took out of the cooler, and then he put them back — even if he’d done that, that’s not something you shoot anybody over, much less a 14-year-old, but you just don’t do that,” Lott said.
Following a verbal altercation in the store, Chow and his son reportedly chased Carmack-Belton down the road and suspected him of having a gun. Deputies found a gun near the teenager’s body, but there was no evidence he threatened Chow with it, police said.
Carmack-Belton’s body had a gunshot wound in his lower back, according to the county coroner.
Members of the community reportedly gathered outside the Shell station on Monday to protest the shooting, and there were cheers when the charges against Chow were announced.
The store was also broken into and vandalized Monday night, prompting police to disperse the crowd, according to WIS-TV.
A witness to the shooting who called 911 and spoke to the local outlet on condition of anonymity questioned whether anyone would “want to go in the store now because anything can happen now these days, and everybody’s getting trigger-happy.”
“I just really hope that he gets justice for it because that young man didn’t have to die like that,” the witness said. “But for me to witness that yesterday, I’m in fear for my own brother, and for any of the kids that’s in my neighborhood because these kids, they come outside all the time, they come to this store all the time.”
“Now it’s like now you have to watch your kids,” the witness added.
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