Four charged with killing Raleigh store owner

Majid Mohram, 39, was shot in the chest during a robbery while he worked at M3 Tobacco, 3132-101 Calvary Drive, during the evening of Dec. 2, police say.

Kwamane Monte Everett, 21, of 5504 Chatt St. in Raleigh, Dariel Travionte Haddock, 20, of 1641 Caleb St. in Greenville, Steven Marcel Cooley, 20, of Greenville, and Demario Quentel Williams, 21, of Greenville, face charges of murder, armed robbery and conspiracy to commit armed robbery.

"(They) basically wasted somebody's life and their lives. Not good," said customer Mario Wallace, who knew Mohram.

Relatives said that Mohram had opened his store just five months earlier. He left behind a wife and two young children, who have since returned to their native Yemen.

"He was a really good man. He was working a lot, trying to get a good life and make a nice (life) for his wife and kids," Mohram's cousin, Sultan Muharram, said in December.

The robbers took a wallet, cellphone and keys worth about $300 from Mohram, according to arrest warrants.

Surveillance video shows two men with handkerchiefs over their faces running into the store. One man carries a handgun and appears to point it at someone behind the counter.

"It's horrible," store clerk Mohammad Alsid said Sunday. "When they told me about what happened, I was like, '(I'm) scared. I don't want to work. I don't want to do anything in this store.'"

Since the shooting, surveillance cameras that cover every corner of the store and show people before they enter have been added to M3 Tobacco.

Search warrants show that links to other robberies in Raleigh and Greenville led police to the arrests.

Greenville police arrested Everett, Cooley, Haddock and Williams during a traffic stop Jan. 8 after the armed robbery of a Food Lion store there, WNCT reports.

Raleigh police detectives noted similarities among the Greenville robbery, the M3 Tobacco shop robbery and the robbery of a Food Lion store on Louisburg Road in Raleigh on Jan. 2.

In a Feb. 23 interview with Raleigh detectives, Williams admitted that he was the getaway driver in the Raleigh Food Lion robbery and that the vehicle was in Greenville, warrants state.

A search of the 1999 white Lincoln Town Car turned up 19 rounds of ammunition, a cell phone, Cooley's GED and birth certificates, and music lyrics composed by Haddock, according to the search warrants.

"The perseverance of those follow-up efforts led to arrest warrants charging the four suspects in connection with the Dec. 2 murder and robbery," Raleigh police spokesman Jim Sughrue said, adding that the multi-agency investigation is ongoing.

All four suspects were transferred from the Pitt County Detention Center to the Wake County jail this weekend. They are scheduled to appear in court Monday.

Everett and Haddock both have previous misdemeanor convictions from Pitt County, state Department of Correction records show. Haddock was on probation after being convicted of two larceny counts last May, while Everett was convicted of simple assault in 2008.