Accused Southport shooter was ex-Marine shot in Iraq, carried bullet in his brain
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- Ex-Marine Nigel Max Edge is charged with murder after Southport bar shooting.
- Edge, wounded in Iraq in 2006, lived for years with a bullet lodged in his brain.
- Community knew Edge as a PTSD-affected veteran with a troubled civilian life.
The ex-Marine accused of shooting into a crowded Southport bar Saturday night, killing three people and injuring five more, was severely wounded while serving in Iraq, struggled with mental illness for decades and carried a bullet in his brain years past his time in war.
Nigel Max Edge waited for his first court appearance Sunday, charged with first-degree murder and multiple other felonies. But he was well known around Southport and Oak Island as a veteran struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder from his service overseas, when his name was Sean DeBevoise.
DeBevoise served nearly six years in the Marines between 2003 and 2009, rising to the rank of sergeant and earning the Purple Heart for his service in Operation Iraqi Freedom, ABC confirmed.
In 2020, he published an account of his service titled “Headshot: Betrayal of a Nation,” in which he describes joining the Marines after the Sept. 11 attacks, then serving on one deployment in Haiti and two in Iraq. On the second in 2006, he described being shot three times and taking hits from shrapnel during an ambush in Anbar Province.
“Although other explosions occurred,” he wrote, “the one that hit me crashed into my helmet, causing a traumatic brain injury and paralyzing half my body. ... This wasn’t the end of my story. It was only the beginning.”
He continues with an account of his recovery back in the United States, waking in Bethesda Military Hospital after the first of several comas.
“I was on the verge of madness and was counting uncontrollably to figure out what galaxy or dimension I was in,” he wrote. “I came in and out of my irrational state, jumbled in my mess of a body.”
In his Amazon author biography, DeBevoise said that after his time in a warzone “life would never be the same as it once was. Recreating my life after college, I captain a boat and enjoy foundry work. You are your only constant in life. My Dog Dottie is my sidekick in life.”
Southport Police said Sunday that a boat pulled up to the dockside nightspot and a single person inside opened fire, fleeing down the Cape Fear River. Officers said they found Nigel Max Edge, who legally changed his name in 2023, at a public boat launch in Oak Island when they took him into custody.
Police in Oak Island said all officers there knew Edge, who would “hang out” on their pier.
Nothing society can relate to
In 2007, the Star-News of Wilmington interviewed Edge, then known as DeBevoise, after his treatment in New Hanover Regional Medical Center.
Only a year earlier, the newspaper wrote, doctors had told him he would never walk. He carried a bullet in his brain, walked with a cane and had a skull that was half plastic. The following years are described as slow recovery.
“I’m a quiet man and most of the time I think too much,” he wrote. “I am overlooked a lot and unless I’m asked, I normally don’t tell. But I’m confident, even after being wounded. I don’t feel the need to broadcast my grievances. ...
“The problem with surviving war when you’re not supposed to is that everything that means anything changes,” he wrote later. “But only for you. The fact that you’re unique now is nothing society can relate to. I’m psychologically, biologically and spiritually different than anyone I know because of what happened to me. People doubt me every way possible, including myself on occasion, knowing that I should be dead. However, I am the same person I used to be, deep down.”
This story was originally published September 28, 2025 at 3:14 PM with the headline "Accused Southport shooter was ex-Marine shot in Iraq, carried bullet in his brain."