RALEIGH, N.C.
(AP) -- A white man who apparently called police to complain
about "hoodlums" near his house was charged with murder after he shot
and killed a black man outside, authorities said.
The
shooting happened early Sunday morning when 39-year-old Chad Cameron
Copley fired a shotgun from inside his garage and hit the victim,
according to a Raleigh Police Department news release. He was arrested
hours later, and jail records show the suspect was being held on a
murder charge.
Kouren-Rodney Bernard Thomas,
20, suffered a gunshot wound and was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Police spokeswoman Laura Hourigan said Thomas was black.
A male relative who answered the phone Monday at a listing for members of the victim's family said they weren't doing well.
"We're
broken apart torn apart, not doing well. Trying to get our lives back
on track the way it was but it's hard. We lost somebody very special to
us," said the man, who hung up before giving his name.
Police
released an audio recording of a 911 call that came in shortly before 1
a.m. Sunday in which a male caller tells a dispatcher that he's "locked
and loaded" and preparing to go outside. Saying there are people
outside with guns, he tells the dispatcher he is on neighborhood watch
and asks them to send police.
"We've got a bunch of hoodlums out here racing," he says. "I am locked and loaded. I'm going outside to secure my neighborhood."
The dispatcher then attempts to get a numeric address for the caller, but he declines and hangs up.
About
seven minutes later, an upset female caller gives the dispatcher an
address that authorities would later identify as Copley's house. The
dispatcher asks what happened.
"I don't know. I'm upstairs with our children," the female caller says.
She then gives the phone to what sounds like the same male caller from earlier.
"We
have a lot of people outside of our house yelling and shouting
profanity. I yelled at them 'please leave the premises.' They were
showing firearms so I fired a warning shot," he says. "And, uh, we got
somebody that got hit."
After the dispatcher
asks if someone was shot, the male caller responds: "I don't know if
they're shot or not.
I fired my warning shot like I'm supposed to by
law. ... They do have firearms and I'm trying to protect myself and my
family."
After the dispatcher asks who was outside, the caller says: "There's black males outside my freaking house with firearms."
Hourigan said state law prohibits the police from releasing the identity of emergency callers.
Copley
lives in a subdivision in the northeastern stretches of the city where
tidy two-story homes sit on tree-shaded lots. The surrounding Census
tract is about 60 percent white and almost 30 percent black, with a
median household income of about $76,000 - well above the state as a
whole, according to 2014 Census estimates.
The
news release says Thomas was among people who were outside of Copley's
home, but Hourigan declined to elaborate on where he was when he was
shot.
Two people who called 911 tell the dispatcher that the shots came from inside the house, with one giving the address for Copley.
"Someone just got shot," one of the callers says. "Someone shot him out of his house."
A dispatcher tells another caller not to move the victim as commotion and profanity can be heard in the background.
"Tell him help's already on the way," the dispatcher says.
Police announced Copley's arrest on a murder charge Sunday afternoon.
Copley
appeared before a judge during a short hearing Monday, and he was
denied bail. The Capital Defender's Office said it hadn't assigned an
attorney to Copley's case as of Monday afternoon.
