Court documents provide more details in NC trooper’s murder

COLUMBUS COUNTY, NC (WWAY) — Unsealed search warrants are providing more details in the murder of a NC State Trooper and how police identified and tracked down the second suspect charged in the crime.

According to the documents, the mother of Raheem Davis, the first suspect charged in the deadly shooting of Trooper Kevin Conner, provided law enforcement information that led to the arrest of Chauncy Askew.

Both Davis and Askew are charged with first degree murder. The documents reveal Askew was a suspect in a homicide in Columbus County in 2016, but no further details are given.

Around midnight on October 17, Trooper Conner pulled over a white truck on Highway 701 at the intersection of Sellers Town Road. After approaching the truck, Conner was shot several times and fell to the ground. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Investigators used dash cam video from Conner’s patrol car to get a description of the suspect’s vehicle.  A Fair Bluff Police officer spotted the truck and tried to pull it over just before 1:30 a.m., which led to a short pursuit. It ended in Fair Bluff after the truck drove over railroad tracks and became disabled and the driver ran off.

After a manhunt, Davis was arrested nearby. While being searched, Davis made statements along the lines of “are you looking for the gun” and “I didn’t do anything to him.”

After the arrest, Davis “admitted he drove and fled from the GMC Sierra but stated he only fled because he had been drinking and did not have a license.”

During the course of the investigation, it was learned that the truck had been stolen from a business a few days before. The owner was not aware his truck had been stolen. Surveillance cameras at the business showed that on October 13, the Saturday before the shooting, employees opened the locked gate. A man in a hoodie is seen walking through the gate, getting into the truck and leaving. The owner told investigators that keys are left in the vehicles for employees to use for work purposes.

On Friday, October 19, investigators once again spoke with Davis’ mother. That’s when she told them a woman contacted her on Facebook, gave her a phone number, and when she called the woman on the phone, the woman told her that a man named Askew was wearing bloody clothes after the shooting.

The woman also told Davis’ mother that Askew got into another man’s car between on 1:30 a.m. to 2 a.m. the morning Trooper Conner was shot and killed.

That same day, investigators took video footage from Jimmy G’s Time Saver in Loris, SC. They looked at video from the night Trooper Conner was shot. About 30 minutes before the shooting, video showed two males in the truck. One got gas, while the other went inside and paid. Both men are in the truck when it leaves at around 11:44 p.m. and heads onto Business 701 N towards Tabor City. The traffic stop and shooting happened fifteen minutes later.

Investigators then got a search warrant for Google, to seize data from several cell phones, Google accounts, as well as GPS data and location history tied to Askew.

On Saturday, October 20, the search warrant was executed on Askew’s cell phone and data extracted.

The search warrant was sealed on October 22 to not “jeopardize the investigation” while Askew was still a fugitive. The judge ordered it sealed for 30 days.

On Tuesday, October 23, Askew was arrested in South Carolina. He was indicted by a grand jury earlier this month, which is when District Attorney Ben David announced he intended to seek the death penalty.

The case against Davis remains in District Court.