He was shot 7 times in uptown. Now ‘Paperman’ case opens long list of 2020 murder trials
Near the end of his 40-year newspaper career, Observer carrier Wes Scott began telling his family and bosses that Charlotte had changed, and that the streets along his uptown route had turned meaner and more violent.
Scott also said the changes did not deter him, and that he wanted to deliver the paper until the day he died.
In February 2017, two weeks after his 65th birthday, the Charlotte native — known for miles around solely as “the Paperman” — was found lying in an uptown crosswalk on the edge of the city’s entertainment district, shot seven times during a rainy 2 a.m. robbery attempt near Romare Bearden Park.
“I’ve never met a more dedicated single-copy carrier,” said Robyn Ashley, Scott’s superior at the Observer. “He died the way he lived — delivering the newspaper and serving his community.”
On Monday, Roger Best goes on trial in connection with Scott’s death. The 25-year-old convicted felon is accused of first-degree murder, attempted robbery with a deadly weapon and related handgun charges. Best pleaded not guilty in November 2017. If convicted, he faces a mandatory life sentence without parole.
The trial, Mecklenburg County’s first courtroom murder case of 2020, will kick off a yearlong effort by the District Attorney’s Office, to whittle down its backlog of homicide defendants awaiting their day before a jury.
In 2019, prosecutors took about a dozen accused killers to trial. This year, the office has scheduled 20, said Bill Bunting, head of the district attorney’s homicide team and one of Best’s prosecutors.
“If the defendants refuse to accept reasonable plea offers, we plan to give them the trial that they are asking for,” Bunting said. “But they very well may regret it.”
As of Thursday, the county’s homicide backlog has reached 77 cases in which defendants have entered not guilty pleas and are awaiting a court date. That’s the highest number in at least five years, Bunting said. The wait between a homicide arrest and a murder trial now stretches to up to three years.
That delay may soon be growing. The city had 107 killings in 2019, the most in more than a quarter of a century. As of this week, there have been 76 arrests in those cases.
Earlier this month, during a full day set aside twice a month for procedural hearings in the county’s active homicide cases, the docket sheet of defendants ran to almost 80 names, well over twice the normal number.
To handle the greater caseload in the coming year, Bunting said he will borrow prosecutors from other crime teams within the DA’s office. But the additional staffing may be hamstrung, Bunting said, because there are only three Mecklenburg courtrooms in operation at any given time, and not only homicide trials vie for the available space.
Uptown shootout
Delivering the newspaper has become an increasingly dangerous line of work. According to a 2017 story by the Columbia Journalism Review, 23 carriers have been murdered or violently killed on the job since 1992 — more than twice the number of journalists killed in the U.S. over the same period.
Scott, who lived in Lancaster County, S.C., delivered the paper before dawn each day on a route through uptown west to Beatties Ford Road. The longtime constable carried a gun on his hip.
On the last shift of his life, Scott left his black Toyota pickup idling in the rain when he went inside a 7-Eleven on West Martin Luther King Boulevard to drop off papers and pick up the unsold copies from the day before.
Best, according to police, approached Scott as he returned to his truck. Both men opened fire.
Scott got off one shot before his gun jammed, his brother told CJR.
An Observer carrier a few minutes behind Scott drove up on the scene to find his co-worker lying in the street. The 7-Eleven clerk was screaming.
“They killed the Paperman,” he shouted. “They killed the Paperman.”
Best, who had been hit by Scott’s only shot, waved down police to get help.
This story was originally published January 24, 2020 at 6:44 AM.
