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Online gun picture alerted La. police before search, shooting incident
Mandy Locke, Staff Writer
The News & Observer
WILMINGTON- When police came to search Peyton Strickland's rented house for stolen PlayStation 3 video games, they feared they might find him amid a small arsenal of firearms, according to a search warrant released late Monday.
When UNC-Wilmington campus police headed to the home Friday, they brought reinforcements picked from the New Hanover Sheriff's Office's elite, highly trained and heavily armed emergency responders unit, Sheriff Sid Causey said Monday morning.
Causey said campus police thought the search and arrest would be "high risk." Causey's men agreed to force their way in, then let UNCW police look for stolen goods, the sheriff said Monday.
The search didn't go as planned.
Deputies shot Strickland, an 18-year-old Durham native attending Cape Fear Community College, in the foyer of his home. A bullet in the head killed him; at least one more struck his chest, according to the state medical examiner's office. His German shepherd, Blaze, was also shot to death; at least four other bullets riddled the home's front hallway.
Strickland's roommate, Mike Rhoton, told the Star-News of Wilmington on Saturday that deputies kicked in the door and shot at his friend. He said Strickland might have come to the door with a wireless game controller in his hand.
It all started Nov. 17, when Justin Raines, a UNCW freshman from Apex, headed to a friend's dormitory with two $641 PlayStation 3 video games he and his twin brother had camped out at Wal-Mart to buy. Two men accosted him, and one hit him on the head with some sort of blunt object; his twin brother said Justin was also bruised in the ribs.
A surveillance video camera in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart captured where police think the robbers began tailing Raines and showed two young men getting into a gold Pontiac, according to the search warrant. Campus police sent the video over e-mail to every professor and student.
A tipster eventually called UNCW police informing on Strickland and Mills, according to the search warrant. Police matched the driver's license photos of the men to their images in the surveillance video. Campus police began staking out Strickland's Long Leaf Acres Drive home.
Mills lived elsewhere, but the search warrant indicates he might be hanging out at Strickland's home. The online photos of Mills made police suspect he could be armed, and UNCW police had received information that Mills was known to carry a firearm, the warrant stated.
The warrant also pointed out that Strickland had been charged with assault in September after a UNCW student complained Strickland punched him so hard that his jaw shattered.
The court papers showed that after the shooting officers took from the house four marijuana water pipes, and several bullet fragments and shell casings among other items.
Officials offered no explanation Monday about what prompted deputies to fire Friday night. Three deputies have been placed on paid leave pending a review by State Bureau of Investigation agents.
Mills has been charged with robbery with a dangerous weapon, assault with a deadly weapon, and breaking and entering a motor vehicle.
Strickland would have faced the same charges.
New Hanover County District Attorney Ben David said Monday that he would "go where the truth leads."
"No one is above the law, and no one is beneath its protection," David said.
The prosecutor has reached out to Strickland's father, Don Strickland, a personal injury and wrongful death attorney in Raleigh. David said he planned to meet Strickland's parents today.
At the modest brick house Strickland shared with his hometown roommates, friends gathered Monday evening to remember the lean boy who had a knack for mechanics. Teenage girls dropped bouquets of flowers into the 1964 motorboat Strickland rebuilt. The young people clutched candles and choked back sobs as one young man sang Bob Marley's "Redemption Song."
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Copyright 2006 The News and Observer
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