An elderly Black man was found on NC roadside. Was it a hate crime or a hit and run?
It’s not yet clear what happened to Lewis “Bubba Cole” Riggsbee before he was found late one cold, clear night last November on a rural Chatham County roadside.
Riggsbee, 76, spent the next two months in and out of hospitals and a Durham rehabilitation center before he died Jan. 26 from the lingering effects of his injuries and pneumonia.
Chatham County sheriff’s investigators suspect he was fatally injured in a hit and run, but they need more evidence and witnesses. The State Highway Patrol, which did the initial investigation, ruled out a hit and run the night Riggsbee was injured.
Riggsbee’s relatives are frustrated, said Sharon Bynum and Sonja Jones, cousins pushing for a more thorough investigation.
They suspect Riggsbee, who was Black, may have been the target of a hate crime. He was found with a blunt-force trauma injury to his head and face that broke his jaw and left him in a coma for a few weeks.
“Even if he was hit by a car, and you didn’t mean to do it, you’ve had enough time now to come and clear your conscience,” Bynum said.
Working for Chapel Hill, Rathskeller
Riggsbee grew up in a tight-knit, African-American community — also known as Riggsbee — that now is encircled by the 1,600-acre Briar Chapel development in northern Chatham County.
He worked in Chapel Hill, retiring after 20 years with the town’s public works department and after 30 years as a busboy and waiter at Zoom Zoom pizzeria and The Rathskeller, two Franklin Street restaurants.
Bryan Wilson, owner of Ye Olde Country Kitchen in Snow Camp and one of The Rathskeller’s investors in 1999, was a customer when he met Riggsbee.
“Chef Rigg,” as he was known, was a nice person and a hard worker, who liked to tell stories and went out of his way to make people feel welcome, Wilson said. He recalled a night about 20 years ago when his 2-year-old son left a favorite Hot Wheels car at the restaurant. Riggsbee was waiting for them with it when they came back again for dinner.
“I’ll never forget that about him, because he kept that until we came back,” Wilson said. “We were just customers then, but he knew our faces and he knew us from being in there. He would say stuff to the kids and make them feel good and welcome and just carried on a conversation with all of us — not just the adults, but the kids, too.”
As an owner, Wilson got to know Riggsbee better and sometimes would give him a ride home after work.
“I used to be amazed by how much work he could do — busing tables — because that place was busy,” Wilson said. “He would just be kinda leaning on the wall, and the next thing you know, he’s got two tubs of dishes and he’s dumping them in the dish room and gone again to get some more. He was smooth.”
‘Bubba’ walked the highway
Riggsbee lived alone but near relatives in his family’s modest house on Penny Lane — named for his grandmother — just two miles north of Fearrington Village off U.S. 15-501.
The N&O’s efforts to reach Riggsbee’s daughter and her husband, who live in Raleigh, were unsuccessful.
His cousins said Riggsbee enjoyed playing the lottery, listening to music, and traveling — to Las Vegas, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., where his father used to live. He always had time for a pinch of Tube Rose sweet snuff tobacco, cousin Sharon Bynum said, and to enjoy a pack of peanuts and a Pepsi.
Most people in the community knew “Bubba” as the man who walked along the highway, stopping by the Cruizers gas station at Andrews Store Road and the McDonald’s restaurant at Cole Park Plaza, a few miles north, for food, lottery tickets and small talk.
Shernetta Edwards, who had known Riggsbee since childhood, said she last saw him walking along U.S. 15-501 about four months ago and gave him a ride to Cole Park.
“I don’t think anybody could ever say anything bad about him, because he didn’t carry himself that way,” Edwards said. “I don’t know what could have happened to him. I don’t know why anybody would beat him up or whatever happened to him. I just don’t see it.”
Found on Jack Bennett Road
Surveillance video obtained from the Cruizers store in December showed Riggsbee making a purchase between 2 and 3 p.m. Nov. 18, Sheriff Mike Roberson told The N&O in an interview Friday. From there, Roberson said, Riggsbee reportedly went to help an older friend, who told investigators that he gave Riggsbee a ride back to the store around 5 p.m.
A First Health Carolinas ambulance crew spotted Riggsbee lying on the side of Jack Bennett Road near Big Woods Road at 1:40 a.m. the next morning while responding to a wreck. He was unconscious, sheriff and EMS officials said, and just over two miles from home. The ambulance took Riggsbee to the UNC Hospitals emergency room.
A hospital CT scan taken later showed Riggsbee had signs of being a “trauma victim with multiple injuries” to his head and face, including a broken jaw and traumatic brain injury, said Bynum’s sister Brenda Burnett, a retired UNC Hospitals employee who worked in surgical trauma in the intensive care unit.
“Lewis was not hit by an automobile. He was not,” she said. “Bubba, as we called him, was beaten.”
Just before 3 a.m., records show the hospital called the Highway Patrol to investigate. The responding trooper and a sheriff’s deputy both arrived on Jack Bennett Road around 3:11 a.m., according to the Highway Patrol.
The Sheriff’s Office initially said deputies did not respond to the incident, but Roberson clarified Friday that the deputy would have been there only in a support role, because it was a Highway Patrol case.
The trooper closed his investigation 25 minutes later after finding no evidence of a hit and run, according to Highway Patrol records and spokesman 1st Sgt. Christopher Knox. The trooper, whom Riggsbee’s family identified as “Blackwell,” did not return a phone message left for him at the Siler City patrol station.
“After a cursory search of the area by both agencies and after speaking with the responding EMS personnel, it was apparent that the injuries sustained to the involved party did not support this to be a hit and run collision,” Knox said in an email. “The physical evidence and/or lack thereof at the location the involved party was found supported the fact that it did not necessitate a collision investigation.”
The trooper “immediately notified” the deputy that the Highway Patrol case was closed, Knox said. Roberson disagreed, saying the trooper did not make it clear, and because the deputy left thinking it was an accident investigation, he didn’t file a report.
“Being there together don’t mean it was turned over,” Roberson said. “We weren’t investigating it until it was reported to us by the family. We thought it was a vehicle accident. The paramedic thought it was a vehicle accident. The doctor thought it was a vehicle accident. I still think it’s a vehicle accident. The only person who doesn’t think it’s a vehicle accident is the trooper.”
Family presses for investigation
Riggsbee’s family didn’t learn until they went to his house on Nov. 24 to check on him and then started making calls that he was in the hospital, Bynum said.
On Nov. 30, the family filed an assault report with the Sheriff’s Office.
In December, investigators obtained surveillance footage from the Cruizers and other businesses that Riggsbee frequented, store employees and Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Lt. Sara Pack said. They also asked a resident near where Riggsbee was found on Jack Bennett Road about her Ring video camera, but it doesn’t store video, the resident told The N&O.
Other nearby neighbors, some of whom knew Riggsbee, said they only learned about what happened from the family, not deputies.
Riggsbee did not become lucid enough to talk with investigators until Dec. 19, after he had moved to a Durham rehabilitation center, Pack said. In that interview, Riggsbee remembered walking along the road before he was injured — and indicated he was not assaulted — but recalled few other details, Pack said.
By Dec. 29, when a Sheriff’s Office investigator told the family he had tried to talk with Riggsbee again, he was in decline.
The Sheriff’s Office doesn’t think Riggsbee was the victim of an assault or “a targeted attack,” based on his medical reports and the evidence so far, Pack said. His head injuries might have been caused by a mirror on a truck or van, Roberson said, but after checking local body shops, investigators didn’t find anything.
The Sheriff’s Office would expect to see more bruises, torn clothing and other marks if Riggsbee had been assaulted, Roberson said, and because he was found with his wallet and other valuables, robbery is not considered a motive.
It is still possible that Riggsbee fell or suffered some other accidental injury, Pack said.
“Mr. Riggsbee was a senior resident, small in stature, visibly frail, and suffering from physical and mental ailments even before the incident,” she said. “It is also extremely dark along that stretch of road as there is no artificial lighting, plus it would’ve been extremely cold that night and possibly slick in some spots — not the greatest conditions for walking.”
Sheriff’s Office needs more clues
In early January, Riggsbee developed pneumonia and was admitted into Duke Hospital, family said. He was discharged back to the rehabilitation center on Jan. 22 and died Jan. 26.
The family has continued to push for answers from the agencies that responded that night and has amassed a folder of notes, timelines, dates and names that may be relevant.
“I was calling the state patrolman, the Chatham County sheriff, the fire department, everybody, trying to figure out what happened,” Bynum said. “Basically, I was being brushed off — we didn’t do a report, there’s nothing we can do. It’s been hell.”
She declined to share what Riggsbee may have told her before he died, saying the family is consulting with an attorney.
“I’m trusting God, honey. I’m not looking for no type of gain or anything like that. All I want is that whoever did this be brought to justice,” Bynum said.
On March 10, the family posted a flyer about Riggsbee’s death on Facebook and the NextDoor app. The Sheriff’s Office added an extensive post outlining its investigation on Facebook two days later, asking the public for help.
The family is frustrated and angry that law enforcement waited so long to ask for help and at how the case has been handled, Bynum and Jones said.
Roberson said he understands the family’s frustration, but the Sheriff’s Office just doesn’t have a lot to go on at this point. They didn’t ask for help earlier, because they thought Riggsbee would recover, he said.
The Facebook post was meant to clear up misinformation in the community about where Riggsbee was found, who was supposed to be investigating and what the Sheriff’s Office has done since Nov. 30, he said, and to generate more leads.
The investigation is not closed, Roberson said.
“I know Mr. Riggsbee myself,” he said. “I have given Mr. Riggsbee rides when I have seen him on the side of the road — even before I got into law enforcement, I knew Mr. Riggsbee — so I want this to be about Mr. Riggsbee, and I want this to be about trying to find out what happened to him.”
Riggsbee’s family, his friends and people in the community said they also want him to get justice.
“He was a good man, a humble man, who didn’t bother anybody,” Jones said, tears halting her words. “He didn’t bother anybody, and he deserves justice.”
Anyone with information about what happened to Lewis Riggsbee or who saw him Nov. 18-19 can call Chatham County Sheriff’s Office investigators at 919-542-2911.
This story was originally published May 6, 2021 at 5:45 AM.
