Well-Regulated SC Convenience Store Owner Shoots 14-Year-Old Black Kid In The Back, Like A Damn Coward

Rick Chow executed a 14-year-old on suspicion of shoplifting.

Rick Chow, who owns a Shell gas station in Columbia, South Carolina, chased 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton out of his store Sunday night and fatally shot him in the back. Chow believed Carmack-Belton had stolen four bottles of water. He was mistaken. Also, it was just water. We're talking at most $20. That's what Chow apparently considered the value of a human life.

According to the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, which reviewed surveillance footage, there was a verbal confrontation between Chow and Carmack-Belton but it didn't become physical. Chow and his son chased the 14-year-old down the street, far from the store property. Carmack-Belton fell but got back up and ran before Chow eventually shot him in the lower back.

“It’s senseless, it doesn’t make sense,” Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said at press conference on Monday. “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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Coroner Naida Rutherford, countering social media narratives, stressed in a video that Carmack-Belton removed the bottles of water from a cooler but put them back. He never stole or attempted to steal anything. His actions were what the owner of a convenience store should have recognized as "shopping."

“This is heartbreaking 💔 Listen to the Dr. @naidarutherford who is the coroner of Richland County and the one to determine the cause of death on our young brother Cyrus Carmack-Belton. She is demanding Justice as we all are for the family and community.”

— BGRbckuppage (@BGRbckuppage) 1685492384 

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott agreed that shoplifting and certainly not suspected shoplifting aren't capital crimes.

"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,” Sheriff Lott said.

 Chow's store was vandalized and looted over the weekend, which is pointless and only exploits Carmack-Belton's death. Sheriff Lott said Richland County police will now have to expend resources guarding the store when it could be doing almost anything else.

Chow, 58, was charged with murder. Chow's son reportedly told him that Carmack-Belton was armed, and while deputies recovered a gun near the victim's body, there's no evidence that Carmack-Belton pointed the gun at Chow or threatened him with it. Obviously, a 14-year-old boy shouldn't have a gun, but in some states Republicans are refusing to outlaw unsupervised minors carrying guns, and in South Carolina itself he was just four years away from being legally able to carry a concealed weaponwithout a permit or training. (Seems a bad idea, but I'm no longer a South Carolina voter.) An estimated 49.4 percent of South Carolina adults "share their home with at least one gun," and yes, that's weirdly intimate imagery. Someone armed in South Carolina is like a coin flip, but Chow still freaked out.

“SC House votes 90-30 to give second reading — essentially passing — to a bill allowing people 18+ in SC to carry loaded, concealed weapons without a permit or training. The “constitutional carry” bill will head to Senate after a perfunctory third reading in the House tomorrow.”

— Mary Green (@Mary Green) 1677102944 

It's also likely that Chow didn't see Carmack-Belton as a child, and that is often an excuse given when someone shoots a Black kid. However, only a coward shoots anyone in the back. This was cold-blooded murder.

 WISTV reports:  

Linda Suber, who lives nearby, saw Carmack-Belton lying on the ground on Sunday night.

“It’s just sad, it’s sad,” she said. “If y’all would have seen that baby laying right there, that’s all I can say.”
Suber’s son Tavaris Bell was murdered on Broad River Road in 2006.

“Just to see him laying right there, I didn’t get to see my son laying where he got killed, but I saw him in the hospital, it just brought back memories,” Suber said.

One woman, who lives near the store, saw the shooting happen and called 911. (She did not give reporters her name.)

“Do you even want to go in the store now because anything can happen now these days, and everybody’s getting trigger-happy,” she said. “I just really hope that he gets justice for it because that young man didn’t have to die like that. 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.”

Contrary to right-wing rhetoric, guns don't secure freedom. They only promote fear.

[ WISTV ]

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