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Arrest made in fatal shooting of Durham teen

A 19-year-old who faced firearms charges after a 2008 party in which two people were shot dead, including the half-brother of a suspect in slaying of Eve Carson, faces murder charges in an Aug. 11 slaying.

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DURHAM, N.C. — A 19-year-old who faced firearms charges after a 2008 party in which two people were shot dead, including the half-brother of a suspect in slaying of Eve Carson, faces murder charges in an Aug. 11 slaying.

Dylan S. Turner, 19, of 412 Junction Road, was charged with murder and shooting into an occupied vehicle in the slaying of Torian Thornton, 17, on Aug. 11, the Durham County Sheriff's Office announced Wednesday.

Investigators believe that Thornton was among friends at a Cook-Out restaurant, at 3624 Hillsborough Road, where gunshots were fired. Deputies found Thornton, who had been shot in the head, in the passenger seat of a car at an Exxon station on East Club Boulevard, near Interstate 85, around 1:30 a.m. Friends took him to a local hospital, where he died a day later.

Investigators with the sheriff's office said that they received several tips from the public, including those called into Crime Stoppers, which led to Turner's arrest. He was placed in the Durham County jail.

Turner was convicted in 2008 of misdemeanor possession of a firearm by a minor and sentenced to probation, according to state Department of Correction records.

The charge stemmed from a shooting at a Nov. 8, 2008, party in which two people were killed and two injured. One of those killed was Shelton Henderson Jr., 19, the younger half-brother of Demario James Atwater, a suspect in the slaying of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill senior Eve Carson.

At the time of Thornton's death, Durham police investigators said they were looking into whether it was connected to two shootings just a few hours earlier. Larry Donnell Timberlake, 42, of East Point, Ga., died after being shot at a Red Lobster restaurant, at 4416 Chapel Hill Blvd., and Robert Terry, 30, of Durham, was shot while inside a car in the parking lot of the nearby AMF Durham Lanes bowling alley.

No suspects have been named in those shootings.

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