Jury convicts Raleigh homeowner who complained of 'hoodlums' for killing man

Chad Cameron Copley, 40, will be sentenced Friday morning, when he faces a mandatory life term in prison without parole for 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.

The seven-woman, five-man jury deliberated a little over an hour before reaching its verdict.

"I want to just thank Chad for telling the truth, just telling the truth," Thomas' mother, Simone Thomas, said after the verdict was announced. "If he didn't tell the truth, [the result] would be something different, and my son would have never been able to rest. He just wanted people to know that he wasn't a hoodlum, he wasn't a bad kid, he wasn't a thug, he wasn't a gang-banger, and I just wanted to clear his name."

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

Wake County Assistant District Attorney Patrick Latour said Copley never mentioned anyone pulling a gun on him until he was on the witness stand, and he reminded jurors that Copley has admitted to lying about what he told a 911 dispatcher and investigators on the night of the shooting.

But there were no cars, no vandalism and no neighborhood watch.

Copley also admitted to aiming at the man's chest, contrary to previous statements that he only fired a warning shot.

"Why should you believe him now?" Latour asked jurors. "He's repeatedly made things up about this case."

Defense attorney Raymond Tarlton told jurors self-defense involves "apparent events," not just actual ones.

"We're talking about split-second decisions made by a 39-year-old husband and father," Tarlton said. "Whenever we're talking about self-defense, we're talking about ... judging what somebody else did in a split-second decision situation. You have to weigh that through the eyes of the person at the time this happened."

He and fellow defense attorney Brad Polk argued that police were so anxious to arrest Copley and close the case that they didn't bother with any evidence that didn't fit that narrative.

They questioned why investigators didn't search for a gun at a house down the street where Thomas had gone to a party or test other areas of Copley's front yard for blood. That could have backed Copley's statements that he fired a shot only because an armed man was closing in on his home.

"There was a breakdown on the search for the truth," Tarlton said.

Latour responded that Copley has been the only person not committed to the truth.

He said there was "zero evidence" of self-defense, saying someone would have to have been forcibly trying to enter Copley's home for that to be true.

"No one tried to get in the house. At most, they tried to get in the yard," Latour said. "If you take what Korey did as forcible entry, Chad Copley could have shot his mailman."

Copley even provoked the situation, he said, by having his shotgun in hand when he yelled out his bedroom window for partygoers to quiet down and then ignoring his wife's pleas to let it rest to head downstairs gun in hand.

"You just can't take matters in your own hands," Simone Thomas said.

"What Chad Copley did that day was act in cowardice," said Justin Bamberg, an attorney for Thomas' family. "Because of his actions, an innocent young man lost his life."

"[He was] a sweet child, a loving child, a protective child, and he didn't deserve to die on the curb," Simone Thomas said.