Boy dies after shooting

Kenneth Anderson Jr., 11, was shot in a road-rage incident near his Northampton County home

GASTON -- An 11-year-old boy died Friday afternoon, a day after he was shot trying to pull his mother away from a gunman who confronted the family in a road-rage argument.

Kenneth Anderson Jr. was shot Thursday night on a red clay road leading to his Northampton County home, 90 miles northeast of Raleigh, and died at Pitt County Memorial Hospital in Greenville.

Robert Lee Vincent, a 65-year-old resident of nearby Garysburg, is wanted on a first-degree murder charge, said Capt. Daryl Harmon of the Northampton County Sheriff's Office.

Harmon said he thinks that the bullet was intended for John McLaurin, Kenneth's stepfather. McLaurin had argued with Vincent in the parking lot of a convenience store.

Kenneth, his stepfather and his mother, Yvette McLaurin, were leaving the Blue Flame convenience store on N.C. 46 at 8:30 p.m. Thursday when they saw a primer-gray pickup at the parking lot's exit onto the roadway, Harmon said.

Yvette McLaurin, who was driving the car, was unsure of which way the truck was turning and pulled alongside it. John McLaurin asked the driver which way he was turning, Harmon said. The conversation quickly turned into an argument between the two men, Harmon said.

Yvette McLaurin pulled out of the parking lot and onto N.C. 46 toward her home. Police say that Vincent followed, flashing his lights and beckoning the family to pull over.

The McLaurins' car stalled on the road leading to Family Lane. The narrow, unpaved road winds through a wooded area and cotton fields to the McLaurins' home, a one-story house with white siding. No one was at the home Friday, and efforts to reach the family were unsuccessful.

Vincent pulled up behind the car, and the two men got out and continued to argue.

"Words were passed, and the conversation got kind of ugly between those two," Harmon said.

Yvette McLaurin also got out of her car, hoping to calm her husband and the other man.

Seeing a gun in the other man's hand, John McLaurin told her to get back in the car. Kenneth hopped out to help pull his mother away, Harmon said.

Police think that as Kenneth went to his mother, Vincent pointed the gun at John McLaurin and fired, grazing McLaurin but striking Kenneth in the forehead.

Vincent calmly got back in his car and drove off, Harmon said. Police had not arrested him as of late Friday night.

Only acquaintances

Harmon said he does not think Kenneth or the McLaurins knew Vincent as more than an acquaintance around the crossroads community, surrounded by thick stands of pine and cotton and peanut fields.

Patricia Hartz, Vincent's daughter, expressed disbelief that the retired railroad worker would shoot someone.

"That's not like my father to do stuff like that," said Hartz in a telephone interview. Her father usually spends his days fishing or working on his house, she said.

In 2000, Vincent was found guilty on a misdemeanor charge of assault with a deadly weapon, according to court records. He also has a 1989 conviction for driving while impaired and speeding to elude arrest.

At the Garysburg barbershop he has run for the past 20 years, Freddie Mayo said customers have been talking about incident.

Mayo, who cut Kenneth's hair, remembered him as a polite, well-mannered boy.

"It's so bad that people just shoot," Mayo said.

(Staff news researcher Brooke Cain contributed to this report.)