Raleigh homeowner testifies in murder trial: 'He reached for his gun, and I shot him'

Chad Cameron Copley, 40, is charged with murder in the Aug. 7, 2016, death of 20-year-old Kouren-Rodney Bernard Thomas.

Thomas was leaving a house party down the street from Copley's home on Singleleaf Lane when he was shot. Investigators said Copley fired a shotgun through a window from inside his garage.

Copley said he was having a lousy day on Aug. 6, 2016: His 18-year-old son, Troy, had run away from home several days earlier, and he had a huge fight with his wife that morning. So, he spent the day sulking, drinking and sleeping in his garage, which he had converted into a "man cave."

Troy, who had a history of drug use and wild behavior, finally returned home late that night, and Copley said his son stayed in the garage while he went upstairs to make up with his wife.

But he heard a lot of noise outside the house – people shouting obscenities and revving car engines – and he opened the window and yelled at everyone to keep quiet. He said some people shouted back at him, and three flashed handguns at him.

"My first thought was it was Troy outside raising hell, and these were his friends," Copley testified, calling his son "a hoodlum."

Before the dispatcher picked up the call, Copley can be heard in the recording telling someone, "I'm going to kill him."

Copley said Tuesday that the comment about killing someone was directed at his son because he was furious with him, and he defined a hoodlum as "a juvenile delinquent," someone who "won't listen to authority."

He said he pulled a 12-gauge shotgun out from under his bed and loaded five rounds into it, and ignoring his wife's pleas not to go out to confront anyone, he went downstairs in search of his son. Once downstairs, he said, he saw two figures in his back yard.

Troy was still in the garage, and he told his father he didn't know the people outside, Copley said. So, he sent his son upstairs with his wife and two young daughters.

Copley said he looked through a window in the garage door and saw two men standing in his driveway beside his wife's minivan. The two matched the descriptions of two of the three men who had flashed weapons at him earlier.

"I start yelling, 'Leave the premises. I have a firearm. PD [police] is on the way,'" he testified. "I got their attention, but they didn't seem like they wanted to leave."

One of the men started to walk away and then approached the house again, Copley said.

"He reached for his gun, and I shot him," he said. "I believed he was going to turn around and fire in my direction. He wouldn't stop."

Copley wept as he apologized for the shooting, noting that some of Thomas' friends described him as someone who took care of the group.

"I should have listened to my wife," he said. "She told me not to go out there, not to make a big deal of it."

Copley admitted that he aimed at the man's chest, contradicting his stance that he fired only a warning shot, which he told a 911 dispatcher after the shooting and repeatedly told police during their investigation.

Still, he said he didn't think he hit anybody because the man dropped his gun and walked off. It was only when Copley got upstairs and saw the man collapsed near his mailbox with others around him that he realized he had shot the man.

No gun was found near Thomas or anywhere in Copley's yard.

Under cross-examination, Copley acknowledged that much of what he told the 911 dispatchers that night was false. There were no racing cars, there was no vandalism, and there is no neighborhood watch.

He also said he didn't tell police during questioning about the man reaching for a gun before he shot him.

"Looking back, that would have been helpful," he said, later calling himself "a coward" for lying to police.

Wake County Assistant District Attorney Patrick Latour suggested that Copley has spent the past year and a half, concocting a story to explain his actions that night.

"We're supposed to believe you today about all of this stuff?" Latour said.

"That would be nice," Copley responded.

The defense wrapped up its case Tuesday afternoon, and prosecutors plan to call at least one rebuttal witness Wednesday.