Soldier Charged; Victim Talks About Shooting

Elihue P. Schofield, 25, of 625 Banner Elk Drive, was charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.

Raymond Primas, 33, was shot at about 6:30 p.m. Dec. 30 in a Food Lion parking lot at 7071 Raeford Road. Sean McDuffie, 21, was also shot. Devone McLean, who was with McDuffie and Primas, was uninjured.

“Between my thigh and my hips,” McDuffie said of where a bullet struck him. “It came in right here [the front] and came out through the back.”

McDuffie said he and his friends had just walked out of the grocery store and gotten into their car when Schofield confronted them.

"I guess I looked at his girl wrong and me and him got into an argument ,and before you know it, I got out of the car and he shot me. Once he shoots me, I'm kind of in shock,” McDuffie said.

Primas managed to drive a short distance after the shooting before he wrecked the vehicle. He was pronounced dead at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center.

"The next thing I knew, I woke up in the ambulance," McDuffie said.

McDuffie, the son of Red Springs Police Chief Troy McDuffie, was treated at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center.

"It didn't give him the right, you know, to pull out a gun and start shooting and not only shoot me, but take somebody else's life that had nothing to do with it," McDuffie said.

A friend of Schofield, who declined to give her name, said she was with the soldier at the Food Lion that night. She said a car pulled in front of them and two men inside began harassing them. She said Schofield acted out of self-defense.

Schofield, a support soldier in chemical operations for the 7th Special Forces Group, was arrested at Fort Bragg.

Schofield came to Fort Bragg from Fort Belvoir, Md. He is from Chicago and has a wife and three children. He was deployed for a six-month tour in Iraq in 2003.

Schofield was denied bond and was being held in the Cumberland County Jail.