• Two others wounded as more than dozen bullets fly in parking area with more than 150 present at Sam’s Pit Stop convenience store after football game.

By BOB HIGH
Staff Writer

Authorities in the laid-back community of Lake Waccamaw are following several good leads after the first murder – other than a domestic dispute – in at least 51 years that took place Friday night.

It appears the shooting – but not the victims – were related to disputes among gangs that populate other towns in the county and are not linked to a group from the lake, says Police Chief Scott Hyatt.

Darnell Antonio Frink, 22, of Joe Piver Road, Chadbourn, died at the scene. William Jermaine Inman, 24, of Chadbourn was wounded in the left thigh, and Antwan Tramaine Waddell, 14, of Salter Road, Riegelwood, was struck in the lower right leg and upper left thigh.

“We believe the victims were bystanders and not the intended targets of gunfire apparently aimed at other males standing near a Chevrolet Suburban,” Hyatt said.

Frink, Inman and Waddell were among more than 150 people outside Sam’s Pit Stop convenience store at the lake at 10:15 p.m., shortly after the football game between East Columbus and Whiteville high school ended at the lake school.
Four-door Taurus

The victims were standing in front and beside a 1999 Suburban parked between the two gas-pump islands on the east side of the parking area in front of the store.

A four-door Taurus, believed to have been stolen early Friday from a Whiteville car lot, was stopped parallel to the front of the store, just east of the front door.

“The suspects fired from the left-side windows of the Taurus, the front and the rear. There were more than a dozen shots fired, and we believe more than two pistols were used,” the police chief noted.

Frink was standing at the left front of the Suburban, and was shot in his feet and legs. He fell to the pavement, and tried to crawl behind the edge of the gas-pump island.

“It appears he was shot in the back as he tried to crawl away, and he got up and ran about 45 feet to a grass area near the store’s large sign. That’s where he died,” Hyatt stated.

Taurus torched

The Taurus drove to the eastern edge of the building, turned left and exited from the parking area onto Chauncey Town Road in front of the post office, according to witnesses.

The car was found burning within 30 minutes off Prison Camp Road. The location where the auto was destroyed is east of the fairgrounds, about a half-mile from N.C. 130 in the Brunswick area.

Hyatt said the Waddell youth ran when the firing started and went all the way to the Boys & Girls Home campus across N.C. 214 from the convenience store.

The youth didn’t realize a bullet struck him until he went back across N.C. 214 to the store. He was taken from the scene by a family member who struck another vehicle as the driver was hurriedly leaving. Waddell was taken to Delco to his parents and they drove him to a Wilmington hospital, Hyatt said.

Inman was taken, also by a private vehicle, to Columbus Regional Healthcare, where he was treated for his gunshot wound. Both of the wounded victims were released.

‘…pop, pop, pop.’

Hyatt said Adam Sellers, a Lake Waccamaw police officer, was inside Sam’s Pit Stop when the shooting took place. “It was real noisy inside the store. All of a sudden people said something about loud firecrackers.

“It was pop, pop, pop, and some more pops,” the chief noted. Sellers managed to get outside as the Taurus was leaving and he ran to his police car parked near the highway, but the shooting was over.

Several sheriff’s deputies and Highway Patrol troopers assisted in crowd control Friday following the shootings.

Fans attending the East Columbus-Whiteville football game had to pass a metal-detector check, and this delayed many from seeing any of the first quarter of the game. The last people to be checked made in to the playing field near the middle of the second quarter.

This is the first homicide at the lake since Nov. 28, 2004 when Kenny Bethea, 34, of Bennettsville, S.C., was killed by Hill’s Food Store Manager Richard Wilson while Bethea was trying to rob the business.

The last murder in Lake Waccamaw was from a domestic problem. On Feb. 13, 2002. Margie Soles Ward, 47, of Hallsboro, was killed inside Bo’s Food Store by her husband, Curtis D. Ward, 53. Ward then shot himself in the head, and died later the same day.

Gang shooting
Sunday related
to lake murder

Anthony Lee “Bootsie” Vereen, 30, was shot in his left arm Sunday afternoon in Chadbourn in an event authorities feel is tied to the gang shooting Friday in Lake Waccamaw where one man was murdered, and two others wounded.

Vereen was shot in what police feel was a retaliatory event that took place somewhere in the downtown area of Chadbourn about 5 p.m. Sunday, according to City Manager Stevie Cox.

Vereen, who has Whiteville, Chadbourn and Clarkton addresses, was taken to Columbus Regional Healthcare by a private vehicle for treatment of the wound.