Accounts differ in Charlotte fatal shooting

When he saw a stranger shooting at a woman outside his Charlotte home this week, Stephen Sellers went outside and told the stranger, “Don’t shoot. Drop your gun,” Sellers’ lawyer said Thursday.

Defense attorney George Laughrun said the man – later identified as Degarrian Santonia Coleman – ignored Sellers’ command. Instead, Laughrun said, Coleman pointed his gun at the former Mecklenburg County assistant district attorney. Sellers then shot Coleman, killing him.

Since the shooting, questions have been raised about what led to the fatal encounter.

Police said Coleman was riding in a car with his grandmother on Pegram Street just east of uptown Tuesday morning when he shot the woman in her lower right leg. The vehicle crashed into a telephone pole, and Coleman began arguing with his grandmother and shooting at her when they left the vehicle, police said.

Laughrun said his client saw what was happening and walked out of his house. He saw the woman “cowering down between two cars” and ordered the gunman to drop the weapon, Laughrun said. The man did not comply, the lawyer said, and “turned and pointed the gun right at Steve.”

Sellers then fired his gun in self-defense, his attorney said.

“ ‘I can’t believe I had to take someone’s life,’ ” Laughrun said Sellers told him.

But the grandmother, Patricia Crawford, told WBTV, the Observer’s news partner, that Sellers never said a word before shooting her grandson.

“When he came out the door, he came out the door and shot,” Crawford told the station. “He never said a word, and then he shot.”

Crawford told WBTV her grandson suffered from mental illness, and she was taking him to the hospital.

“I heard a pow,” Crawford said. “When I looked, he was standing over my grandson with the gun to his head and I jumped over there and said, ‘Don’t shoot him no more. Please don’t shoot him, that’s my grandson, he’s sick,’ ” Crawford said.

“I understand that he didn’t know what was going on. He probably felt that here’s this man out here trying to kill this woman,” Crawford told WBTV. “But my thing is, when he shot him one time, he didn’t have to shoot him again. My baby is gone. Thirty-one years old. Gone.”

A police news release did not say whether words were exchanged between Coleman and Sellers before the fatal shooting.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police are still investigating the shooting. The Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office said it will then perform an independent review to determine whether any charges are warranted.

“This review, which will be done in the same manner as any review of a fatal incident, will be done only with the consideration of the evidence and the law and without any regard to Mr. Sellers’ past employment,” the D.A.’s office said in a statement.

Laughrun said a person has a right under N.C. law to come to the defense of someone else, including a stranger, and to defend yourself when someone points a gun at you.

Ronald Wright, a professor of criminal law at Wake Forest University School of Law, agreed. “ ‘Defense of others’ is available under North Carolina law on the same terms as ‘defense of self,’ ” Wright said.

Sellers was an assistant district attorney from September 2011 to March 2014, working mostly on misdemeanor cases, the D.A.’s office said Thursday.

He graduated from Davidson College in 2005 and Wake Forest University School of Law in 2011, according to his LinkedIn page.

Sellers left the D.A.’s office to join the Charlotte law practice of his father, Timothy Sellers, Laughrun said. Neither could be reached for comment Thursday.

Reached by phone at the family’s home in Denver, N.C., Sellers’ mother said the family can’t comment pending the investigation.

Nicole Marie Phillips, who owns and lives in the home in which Stephen Sellers also resides, said she also couldn’t comment given the investigation.

Staff Writer Gavin Off contributed

This story was originally published July 2, 2015 at 4:44 PM with the headline "Accounts differ in Charlotte fatal shooting."