Gas station owner denied immunity in 2023 shooting death of SC teen
A Circuit Court judge denied immunity for a former gas station owner who gunned down a 14-year-old on Memorial Day weekend in 2023.
Rick Chow will stand trial for the killing of Cyrus Carmack-Belton, following the conclusion of an immunity hearing Wednesday. Circuit Court Judge Scott Sprouse ruled that Chow was not acting in self-defense when he pursued and shot the teen, wrongfully suspected of stealing water.
Sprouse’s ruling was based, in part, on conflicting statements about whether Carmack-Belton wielded a gun as Chow and his son, Andy Chow, chased him 130 yards from a Shell gas station at 7441 Parklane Road.
Additionally, Sprouse said Chow was at fault in bringing on the shooting because “he was not legally justified to apprehend” Carmack-Belton.
Chow, who repeatedly has been denied bond — including on Wednesday after a request by Luke Shealey — is set to stand trail on May 25, 2026.
5th Circuit Solicitor Byron Gibson and Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott told Sprouse that not only is Chow a danger to the community but that he’s also a flight risk as he has ties with family in Hong Kong.
“Mr. Chow is a danger to this community and deserves to remain confined until the court date when a Richland County jury can make the decisions that it needs regarding the factors in this case,” Gipson said.
Parents of Carmack-Belton, Jordan and Nicole Carmack-Belton, also expressed to Sprouse why Chow should remain behind bars in light of the anguish the former store owner has caused them.
“Instead of the store owners showing any type of understanding or compassion, they hunted my son down,” Nicole Carmack-Belton said. My son “was running so hard, he ran out of his sneakers, dropped his cell phones, fell and hit a curb so hard that he abstained a large gash on his legs. My baby was in fear of his life.”
Nicole and Jordan Carmack-Belton, who are represented by Austin Nichols of The Rutherford Law Firm, filed suit against Rick Chow for wrongful death last year.
In September, Circuit Court Judge Daniel Coble stayed, or paused, the suit until the conclusion of Chow’s criminal trial.
Nichols said Chow’s immunity claim was “a preposterous and offensive argument made by the defense.”
“What is offensive to myself, this family and the life of Cyrus Carmack-Belton is this ploy and argument that ‘they,’ the two adult males who chased a 14-year-old boy out of a store, were at some point in reasonable fear of their own life being taken from them,” Nichols said. “It’s preposterous.”
For three days, lawyers for Chow — Brian and Luke Shealey of The Shealey Law Firm — argued before Sprouse that Chow was acting in defense of his son, Andy Chow, when the then-58-year-old fired his .45 caliber Glock handgun into the back of 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton, killing him.
Chow’s legal team maintain that Chow’s actions were justified under South Carolina’s “Stand Your Ground” and citizen arrest laws.
“Rick Chow didn’t want Cyrus to die, but he (had to) shoot to save his own son,” Shealey said during closing arguments.
Testimony earlier this week revealed that as Rick and Andy Chow chased Carmack-Belton 130 yards from their family owned gas station at 7441 Parklane Road, the 14-year-old tripped and fell. When the teen got back up, Andy said Carmack-Belton pointed a gun at him, prompting Rick Chow to shoot the kid.
At issue in the case is whether it was lawful for the Chows to begin chasing Carmack-Belton, who was wrongfully suspected of stealing bottles of water, in the first place when the Chows already had clear video footage of the teen’s face and a sufficient description of what he was wearing and the direction he was headed in leaving the store.
In spite of the chase, investigators with the Richland County Sheriff’s Department testified that Andy Chow never told deputies that a gun had been pointed at him and that Rick Chow never saw the teen with a gun before the fatal shot.
Alice Chow, Rick Chow’s wife, and Andy Chow testified Monday they didn’t have a policy that allowed for chasing customers, suspected of shoplifting, from their store.
Retired lead investigator Taima Jordan of the Richland County Sheriff’s Department told the court Tuesday the shooting death of Carmack-Belton would’ve never happened had the Chows not chased him.
Nevertheless, Chow’s legal team argued that Rick and Andy had a right to pursue Carmack-Belton under South Carolina’s citizen’s arrest law, which permits a citizen to arrest someone after witnessing a person commit a felony, suspecting the person committed a felony, or seeing the person commit a larceny.
Under the citizen’s arrest law, the Chows “had a right to pursue a thief and actually physically arrest them and take them to the magistrate,” Shealey told Sprouse during closing arguments.
However, Dale Scott — senior assistant solicitor for the 5th Circuit — argued the state’s citizen’s arrest law didn’t apply in this case as the Chows didn’t witness Carmack-Belton commit a felony, didn’t have any information that he’d committed felony, nor did they see him steal anything.
Sprouse agreed, saying “the law of citizen’s arrest is inapplicable to this case.”
“If, as Andy testified, their hot pursuit of (Carmack-Belton) was merely to see where he went (after leaving the store), the law of citizen’s arrest is irrelevant altogether,” Sprouse said.
Shealey further argued that the sheriff’s department was hasty in determining to charge Chow with murder in order to appease a community in uproar.
The Richland County Sheriff’s Department, “had to appease the community in this high pressure political situation,” adding the department was biased in its investigation by failing to prosecute anyone associated with vandalizing the Chow’s store one day after the shooting, Shealey said.
Sprouse appeared unmoved by the argument, maintaining that Chow, fundamentally, was at fault in causing Carmack-Belton’s death and didn’t have a right to pursue the teen.
If convicted, Rick Chow faces a minimum of 30 years in prison, according to Gipson.
This story was originally published November 5, 2025 at 2:47 PM.
