SC store owner accused of killing 14 year-old claims ‘stand your ground’ defense
A Columbia convenience store owner accused of shooting and killing a 14-year-old in 2023 has claimed a “stand your ground defense,” according to court documents.
On Nov. 3, Rick Chow, 60, will argue that he was standing his ground when he shot and killed 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton, after suspecting the teen of stealing bottles of water from a Shell station at 7441 Parklane Road in May 2023, according to an order by Fifth Circuit Judge Daniel Coble.
Under South Carolina’s “Stand Your Ground” law, a person is allowed to meet force with force, including deadly force, if the person asserting the defense is in a place they have a right to be, not engaged in unlawful activity and believes the level force is necessary to prevent death or great bodily injury to himself or another person or to prevent the commission of a violent crime.
“I in no way see where the state of South Carolina intended the stand your ground statute to apply to an adult individual, as well as two other adult individuals, harassing, humiliating and intimidating a 14-year-old child, accusing him of stealing and then chasing him down the road, shooting him in the back to death, and then discovering, ‘Oh, he didn’t steal anything,’ and somehow were defending themselves,” Attorney Austin Nichols of the Rutherford Law Firm said.
Coble’s order was in response to a wrongful death law suit filed against Chow in 2024 by Nichols.
In the suit, attorneys argued that Chow and his son engaged in a “mob-like assault” against Carmark-Belton, who, fearing for his life during the confrontation with the men, ran, fell out of his shoes and got back up before Chow shot Carmark-Belton in the back, killing him.
Chow allegedly believed the teen had stolen bottles of water and was armed with a gun, according to Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott during a 2023 news conference.
“Even if [Carmack-Belton] 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 had done that, that’s not something you shoot anybody over, much less a 14-year-old,” Lott said during the conference. “You just don’t do that.”
Carmack-Belton died from a single gunshot wound to his right lower back, which caused hemorrhaging and significant damage to the teen’s heart, according to the Richland County Coroner’s Office.
Chow, who has now been denied bond twice, had allegedly been involved in two prior incidents where he confronted people he suspected of shoplifting and then opened fire, according to a report from NBC News.
Coble, in his order, said requiring Chow to sit for the wrongful death suit prior to his criminal trial would “unduly prejudice [the 60-year-old] and deprive him the right to adequately defend” himself.
Chow’s criminal trial is slated for the first half of next year, according to Coble’s order.
