After a verbal confrontation, the 14-year-old boy ran and was chased by the gas station owner armed with a gun. Police said the man shot the boy in the back.
Photo of Rick Chow, who has been charged, Monday, May 29, 2023, with murder in the death of a 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton. A South Carolina gas station owner was charged Monday with murder in the death of a 14-year-old boy whom he allegedly chased from the store and shot in the back, the sheriff said.
Photo of convenience store vandalized in Columbia, South Carolina. Police said a store owner chased a 14-year-old he thought shoplifted, but didn't steal anything and fatally shot the boy in the back. Chow, 58, was being held in the Richland County jail awaiting a bond hearing. Deputies said he turned himself in with a lawyer Monday, but they did not have the attorney's name. The phone at the convenience store was not answered Tuesday.There was no sign that Carmack-Belton was fighting with Chow before he ran out of the store and there was no injury to his body other than an abrasion from falling and the gunshot wound, Richland County Coroner Nadia Rutherford said.
Rutherford told a crowd at the gas station Monday that the teen's was shot while he was running and the bullet went through his back and into his heart. She told the crowd, which was yelling calls for justice, to listen to the facts. "Even if he had shoplifted four bottles of water, which he had taken out of the cooler and then put back — even if he had done that, that’s not something you should shoot anybody over, much less a 14-year-old," Lott said.
A sign taped to the door read "Water or Life? Which means more?" Another read "Close it down!" A third said the store would be closed on Memorial Day.
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