A South Carolina jury on Monday found Rick Chow not guilty of murder after he fatally shot a 14-year-old Black boy in 2023 whom he had falsely accused of shoplifting from his convenience store.
Mr. Chow, 61, shot Cyrus Carmack-Belton in the back on May 28, 2023, after chasing the teenager, believing he had stolen four water bottles from the Xpress Mart Shell Station he owned in Columbia, S.C. Mr. Chow also said Cyrus had pointed a gun at his son, so he had acted to defend him.
The shooting drew national attention and roiled the community in Columbia, where demonstrators gathered outside Mr. Chow’s shop after the shooting.
The prosecutor in the case, Byron Gipson, said in a statement on Tuesday that the verdict “has brought on strong emotions from our local and national communities.”
“While I am disappointed with last night’s outcome and continue to believe that Rick Chow’s actions were not justifiable, I respect our criminal justice system and the jury’s decision,” said Mr. Gipson, South Carolina’s solicitor for the Fifth Circuit.
State Representative Todd Rutherford, a lawyer who was also representing the Carmack-Belton family, said the family would pursue a lawsuit, The Associated Press reported.
Jack Swerling, a lawyer for Mr. Chow, called the shooting a “tragedy” in an interview on Tuesday, adding that the jury had nevertheless reached the “right verdict.”
In South Carolina, murder “requires a showing of malice aforethought,” he said. “I don’t think the state was able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rick Chow acted with malice.”
Mr. Swerling said he “never sensed there was any racial profiling in this case,” noting that the store had a shoplifting problem and that Mr. Chow said he had only fired his gun after seeing Cyrus point a gun at his son, who was 20 at the time. (Mr. Gipson said during closing arguments that multiple witnesses had testified that they did not see anything in Cyrus’s hands while he was running from the store, according to The Associated Press.)
Mr. Swerling also said Mr. Chow, who is from Hong Kong and is a U.S. citizen, had rendered aid to Cyrus after the shooting, “but the kid succumbed to the gunshot wound.”
Mr. Chow’s store was vandalized and looted after the shooting. Photos of the store showed graffiti on the building and yellow crime scene tape around it. Among the spray-painted messages was “RIP King Cyrus.”
During a news conference in 2023, Sheriff Leon Lott of Richland County called the shooting “disturbing,” noting that even if Cyrus had shoplifted water bottles, “that’s not something you shoot anybody over, much less a 14-year-old.”
At the time, Naida Rutherford, the Richland County coroner, said at the news conference that there was no indication that Cyrus “was fighting with the store owner prior to him running out of the store.”
Cyrus had no wounds on his hands or scratches, she said. His only injuries were an abrasion from the fall and the gunshot wound on his lower right back, Ms. Rutherford said.
Kitty Bennett contributed research.