COLUMBIA, S.C. — In a tense moment inside the Richland County Courthouse — resembling a television crime drama — a jury of 12 people announced the fate of a former convenience store owner who shot and killed a 14-year-old boy, wrongfully suspected of stealing bottles of water.

With a calm and solemn demeanor, the clerk of court read the verdict: not guilty.

In a courtroom lightly filled with members of the store owner's family and the teen's family, the verdict was met with a mix of muffled emotions — some in relief and others in disappointment. Some cry out loud while trying to contain their sniffles.

The verdict came nearly nine hours after lawyers on both sides of the case concluded closing arguments.

Rick Chow, then 58, shot 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton around 8 p.m. the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend of 2023. The store owner, along with his wife and son — Alice and Andy Chow — at the time believed Carmack-Belton was stealing four bottles of water.

Fifteen hours following the shooting, Chow was charged with murder.

It was around 12:15 p.m. Monday when jury members were released to begin deliberations after hearing closing arguments by Senior Assistant Solicitor Dale Scott and defense attorney Shuan Kent.

Nearly three hours later, the jury’s foreperson returned on behalf of the panel, seeking the court’s clarification on the definition of malice in the context of murder under South Carolina Law.

Malice, Circuit Court Judge Heath Taylor explained, is the display of hatred, ill will or hostility towards one person by another. It further involves a person intentionally committing a wrongful act without just cause or excuse toward inflicting injury on another.

Following another hour, the jury returned to the courtroom with a note that Taylor acknowledged but did not share in open court. He politely advised the panel return to the jury room and continue deliberations around 4:30 p.m. Monday.

Again, about 45 minutes later, around 5:55 p.m., the jury returned with another note to which Taylor — once more — didn’t disclose in court, but insisted the panel continue deliberations into the evening, adding he wanted to caution the jury being tampered with in light of widespread media coverage.

Closing arguments

Before Taylor advised the jury on deliberation parameters, 5th Circuit Solicitor Byron Gipson had the last word in reply to Kent, who followed Scott.

“We all know there are 50 states in the United States of America, but I think I’ve learned sitting in this trial that they’re actually 51,” Gipson said. “There’s the (additional) state of denial. The state of denial is where (Chow) lives, because he’s denied that what he did was wrong.

“How afraid do you have to be to run out of your shoe and not turn around and pick it up?” Gipson asked the jury. “How afraid do you have to be to drop two cellphones and keep running?

“Do you really want to get what you would get (at 14 years old) if you lost two cellphones from your mother?” Gipson asked the panel. “But you know why (Carmack-Belton) didn’t turn around? Because he was scared, because (Chow), armed with a .45-caliber pistol, and his son (Andy) were chasing him for no reason down the road in South Carolina.”

A ‘child’ or ‘thug’ with a gun

A chief point of contention between the prosecution and defense was whether, on May 28, 2023, Carmack-Belton was acting as a “child” or “thug” when he walked into the Chow’s convenience store armed with a 9 mm handgun.

“What was a 14-year-old doing walking around Columbia with a semi-automatic 9mm weapon with a bullet in the chamber ... illegally walking into a store that bars people from coming in with weapons?” Swerling first prompted jurors during opening statements last Wednesday.

During closing arguments, defense attorney Shuan Kent told jurors the state had not presented the “full story.”

“You have to ask yourself the question, why don’t (the state) want me to know the full story?”

That story, according to Kent, involves the fact — although disputed by the prosecution — that Carmack-Belton, while illegally carrying a 9 mm handgun, presented and pointed the weapon at Andy as Andy and Chow chased the 14-year-old 130 yards from their Shell gas station.

“If someone pointed a firearm as I’m chasing them incorrectly, and they turned around and pointed a firearm at me, I would tell them, ‘Stop, drop it,’ and if they did not drop it, I would fire,” Kent said adding that the scenario “sounds eerily familiar to this case.”

Kent used the term “incorrectly” to signify to jurors that under South Carolina Law, it’s not illegal to chase people under a false assumption. In addition, he argued, the now-61-year-old’s fatal shot is shielded under state law regardless if Chow was mistaken in the danger imminently posed toward his son, Andy.

Scott, on the other hand, argued Carmack-Belton wasn’t a “thug,” “tough guy,” or “gun slinger,” but simply a 14-year-old boy who never should’ve been carrying a gun. But it was something even Scott said he once did as a child.

“I remember going up to a little cabinet just off in the kitchen in my grandparents’ house and finding a little revolver (my grandad) had there,” Scott told jurors. “I remember taking it down, and I remember going down to the pond and shooting a few shots. I was probably about 12, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to do that and that I would get in trouble if I were caught.

“If Cyrus was the tough guy the defense wants you to believe, he would’ve pulled that pistol out, pointed and fired,” Scott said.

Gipson, in his reply to Kent, echoed the same.

“If Cyrus was this thug (the defense) keep telling you he was ... we would have never gotten 130 yards down the road,” Gipson argued. “(Cyrus) would have held court right at 7441 Park Lane Road ... (he) would have been the judge, the jury and the presenter of the sentence, right there in that spot.”

Instead, he fearfully ran — out of his shoe — from adults, Gipson said.

“Let’s think about who acted like the thug (or) the gangster, (Chow) who chased him down the street, or (Carmack-Belton) who ran while he had a gun hidden,” Gipson argued.

The law of withdrawal

Besides arguing a theory of defense of others, Chow’s defense team also offered evidence that would invoke the law of withdrawal, which they say, Andy activated when he put his hands up in surrender to Carmack-Belton allegedly pointing a gun at him.

Under the state’s law of withdrawal, a person who starts an altercation with another person has the right to self-defense if, after withdrawing from the altercation by action or words, the other person becomes the primary aggressor.

“Let’s say I start a fight with Mr. Scott, and ... I go up to him and I say, ‘I’m going to get you, I’m going to take you down, I’m going to hurt you,’ and I start the fight and I come at him and I’m about to hurt him and then all of a sudden I said, ‘you know what, this is stupid,’ and I turn around and I’m like, ‘I’m over this,’ and Mr. Scott brings a knife and comes at me.

“Well, according to (the prosecution’s) theory, I got to let (Mr. Scott) stab me.”

Gipson, citing four eyewitnesses presented at trial, told jurors despite Kent’s argument that Andy withdraw from the altercation by raising his hands and backing away from Carmack-Belton, once he saw the teen wielding a gun, no one “without the last name Chow” testified that happened.

Andy “did not withdraw. “(He and Chow) kept going forward, and ultimately (Carmack-Belton’s) gun was never pointed,” Gipson said. “But folks, I suggest to you, even if it was pointed, (Carmack-Belton) was running in the opposite direction. That’s what the evidence shows by the way he was shot.

Indeed, testimony offered by Dr. Amy Durso — a forensic pathologist, who performed Carmack-Belton’s autopsy — showed the teen could not have been standing upright or fully facing Andy based on the trajectory of the bullet, which entered his lower back and traveled upward through one of his lungs and landed in his heart.

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