Questions loom over NC corner store where police killed man who had fake gun
What officers said about her uncle wasn’t true — it couldn’t be, Olivia Henderson thought. So when state agents launched an investigation into the local police who killed him, she launched one, too.
Undercover Gastonia Police Department officers shot Derrick Manigault at Jakob’s Food Mart in west Gastonia after 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 10. At the time, police said he came in waving a gun around and “making threatening movements.”
That didn’t sound like the man her aunt had been married to more than a year, so Henderson, 33, looked for answers in and around the store. Every day, for at least 14 days after the shooting, she walked through the same door where Manigault was shot. She talked to regulars, cashiers and anyone who said they saw it happen.
She tried, again and again, to get security video of the shooting herself. It would show the truth, she thought.
Henderson never got a copy. The owners told her investigators had taken the video from them, Henderson said. But when Gaston County District Attorney Travis Page reviewed the SBI’s findings and cleared the officers earlier this month, the local police department released the store’s footage themselves.
It showed Manigault walking into the shop.
He did not wave a gun.
Gastonia police shooting at corner store
Video shows Manigault, 43, argued with a man for about 30 seconds before walking inside Jakob’s Food Mart. Manigault was looking around the refrigerators and rows of chips when the man followed him in. The two argued again for about 20 seconds.
During the arguments, Manigault said: “I just said ‘What’s up, bro,” “What the f— wrong with you?” and “You gotta leave me the f— alone.”
Three times while inside the store, Manigault asked the man if he was “trying to lose your life tonight.” After about a minute total of back and forth, Manigault took out a fake gun and held it by his side.
The man responded, but his words are unintelligible in the recording. One witness described the man as a “crackhead,” Page said in his report. After reviewing state agents’ interview with the man, Page wrote that he was “unreliable.”
A Gastonia Police Department detective wearing a Harley-Davidson t-shirt and Boston Red Sox baseball cap was standing nearby as Manigault held the fake gun in his hand for about 10 seconds. When Manigault turned to leave the store, the plainclothes detective investigating underage alcohol sales shot.
As Manigault ran outside Jakob’s Food Mart, the officer continued to shoot, and yelled “Drop it, get on the ground,” surveillance video shows. A Gastonia police sergeant parked outside shot, too. According to the video, neither officer identifies themselves as police.
Manigault ran across the street and died later that night.
Page in his report said the officers were legally justified in shooting Manigault and seeing him as an “immediate and deadly threat.” Page and police have declined to name the officers, even though police names are public record. Manigault’s family identified them as Det. Cody Huffstetler and Sgt. Cody Edge.
‘Heartbreak all over again’
“It’s been heartbreak all over again,” Manigault’s wife, Rebecca Insley said after police released the video and Page announced his decision. “I trusted the process, I waited, and I had faith.”
Insley and Manigault met during a downtown Gastonia bar crawl in early 2024. That was a few months after he was released from prison after serving more than 30 years for a 1999 rape conviction. His family said he was ready to turn his life around after release. By June 2024, he and Insley were married.
Insley told the Observer her husband would stop by Jakob’s to buy cigars or a snack on the way to her place.
“I think color has a lot to do with this,” Insley’s sister and Olivia Henderson’s mother, Leigh Henderson, told the Observer. “If Derrick was a white man, maybe he would’ve gotten 10 more seconds to live, to talk to the officer or to just walk out the door.”
In a statement, Gastonia Police Chief Trent Conard said “it was Mr. Manigault who put this sequence of events into motion ... Our Officers acted quickly to protect themselves and the other citizens believing that Mr. Manigault’s weapon was real.”
Leigh Henderson said she could have understood the officer firing his weapon as soon as Manigault pulled out his gun, but she can’t understand why police waited until his hand was on the door to shoot.
“It was really chilling to watch that officer literally not say a word ... I jumped when we saw that video, because it was just so unexpected,” she said.
Civil rights attorneys Micheal L. Littlejohn and Anthony Burts are representing the family.
Regulars remember
About a month after the shooting, Olivia Henderson showed an Observer reporter around the west Gastonia convenience store. By that time, the people who frequented the market recognized her.
How’s the case going? Anything new? they’d say before asking for a few bucks or a snack from inside.
“Nope,” Olivia Henderson replied, “but we’re trying to bring some light to the case — share what really happened.”
Robert Springs, a 48-year-old who lives in a tent near the market, told the Observer that Manigault was “good people.”
Manigault would always stop to give him money, a beer, fried chicken or a salad — sometimes home-cooked, Springs said.
“I still feel his presence,” Springs said.
Standing feet away from the spot where Manigault fell down and never got up, he joined his hands Olivia Henderson’s, and they prayed.
