South Carolina gas station owner acquitted of murder in 2023 fatal shooting of teen

A South Carolina jury on Monday acquitted an Asian American gas station owner of murder in the 2023 shooting of Cyrus Carmack-Belton, a Black teenager falsely accused of shoplifting from his Columbia convenience store.

Rick Chow, now 61, shot Carmack-Belton, 14, outside his Xpress Mart Shell Station on May 28, 2023, believing the teen had stolen four water bottles. Surveillance footage, however, showed that the boy had returned them.

Chow and his son Andy chased the youngster over 130 yards before firing the fatal shot. Richland County Coroner Nadia Rutherford noted that Carmack-Belton had no wounds on his hands, only a fall abrasion and a gunshot to his lower right back, “consistent with someone who was running away.”

Prosecutors argued Chow acted out of anger. Meanwhile, the defense said he fired to protect Andy after the teen pointed a gun at him, a claim no non-Chow witness corroborated. After over eight hours of deliberation, the jury returned a unanimous not guilty verdict Monday, days before the second anniversary of Carmack-Belton’s death.

Chow, who had been held without bond since 2023, was expected to be released after processing. His attorney Jack Swerling said the state failed to prove “malice aforethought” required for murder and that he “never sensed there was any racial profiling in this case,” as per The New York Times.

On the other hand, Carmack-Belton’s family said in a statement to ABC News, “Yesterday a jury watched our 14-year-old boy run away from two grown men on video. They knew one of them shot him in the back and they still said no one is to blame.” Atty. Todd Rutherford added, “I’ve been practicing law for almost 30 years. I’ve never seen anything like this. I don’t understand it.”

The case implicates an Asian business owner in the killing of a Black child suspected of stealing, deepening fault lines between communities of color. For many Asian Americans, the verdict may not be a cause for celebration, but a moment of painful reckoning.

At the same time, it reflects real anxieties among immigrant small business owners, many of whom operate in under-resourced neighborhoods with limited police protection and genuine safety concerns. Records show Chow had previously fired at two shoplifting suspects in 2015 and 2018, with police ruling both self-defense.

The verdict ultimately demands honest self-examination about complicity in anti-Black racism and the limits of self-defense claims. It also asks whether community solidarity can survive the discomfort of cases where the lines of victimhood and perpetration cannot stay clean.