Key witness arrives in NC court after trial starts in Home Depot worker’s death
The jury had left for the day Thursday when a key witness in the death of a Home Depot worker showed up to court in Hillsborough.
Diamond Brown, whose tip led police to Terry McMillian Jr., the Durham man on trial for murder, spoke with an attorney before appearing before a judge in Orange County Superior Court.
McMillian, 29, is charged with first-degree murder and robbery. A jury will decide whether his actions during the Oct. 18, 2022, robbery caused Home Depot worker Gary Rasor’s death, or whether Rasor, 83, died six weeks later from existing health conditions.
McMillian could receive life in prison if convicted of first-degree murder.
Special Superior Court Judge Clayton Somers spoke briefly with Brown, who could not be found after she claimed a $10,000 reward in 2023 for McMillian’s arrest. Prosecutors weren’t sure she would respond to a subpoena to testify at his trial.
Somers agreed Thursday to let Brown be outfitted with a GPS monitoring device and leave for the night, rather than putting her in jail to make sure she shows up to testify Friday in court.
Video, witnesses capture robbery, assault
Thursday’s testimony followed more than two days of jury selection and focused on the events captured by security cameras at the Home Depot in Hampton Pointe shopping center in Hillsborough.
In the videos, a masked man, later identified as McMillian, entered the store around 10:30 a.m. on Oct. 18. The man is seen in another video pushing a cart loaded with three Ryobi power washers to the garden center exit.
Rasor, a nine-year employee affectionately known to co-workers and customers as “Mr. G” and “Mr. Gary,” attempted to stop him.
The man pushed Rasor to the concrete floor. He rolled onto his side and grabbed at his hip before sitting up and attempting to stand.
The robber fled to the parking lot, where Hillsborough building contractor Steven Roberts was in his truck talking on the phone.
Roberts told Orange County District Attorney Jeff Nieman he thought it was odd to see someone leaving the garden center “rather rapidly” and loading boxes into a white car. He called 911, because he thought it was a robbery. He was not able to see the license plate, which was covered, as the person drove away, he said.
Roberts found Rasor on the ground inside the store and asked if he was OK.
“He said, no, I feel like I’ve broken my hip,” Roberts said, adding that he had many conversations with Rasor at the store.
Was Roberts also aware that Rasor fell in August?, defense attorney Kailey Morgan asked later.
“Whenever I saw him, he seemed fine, until the day I saw him down on the ground,” Roberts replied.
Rasor’s cause of death questioned
Rasor was taken to the hospital with a fractured hip and a rib injury, Nieman said. He was discharged to a rehabilitation facility about a week later, where he eventually started walking with the aid of a rolling walker, defense attorney Kellie Mannette said.
Rasor did not report hip pain or any complications at his Nov. 16 appointment, she said.
“The doctors called his progress ‘uncomplicated healing,’” Mannette said. “He went back to the nursing home, where he continued to progress ... In fact, the nursing home staff had to remind him not to put weight on that leg.”
But Rasor died on Nov. 30. The N.C. Medical Examiner ruled his death a homicide, citing complications from blunt force trauma to his pelvis.
“I will ask you to conclude that this man stole and robbed from Home Depot, and this man killed Mr. Rasor,” Nieman said.
The state has to prove that Rasor wouldn’t have died anyway, Mannette countered. He was already at high risk for a cardiac event due to existing issues with combined pulmonary fibrosis emphysema, atrial fibrillation and coronary artery disease, she said.
Medical professionals from Duke University Medical Center and the rehabilitation center are expected to testify.
Manette also argued that the medical examiner faced “an overwhelming caseload” at the time from a COVID-related backlog, and her handwritten notes, which “missed important and critical things,” weren’t put into a final report for over a year.
The report “got things demonstrably wrong,” Manette said.
Store, police respond to robbery
Nieman also called Home Depot employees and a Hillsborough police investigator to the stand Thursday afternoon.
Home Depot assistant manager Keisha Fuller said she was called to the garden center after the incident. She and another associate held Rasor upright until the ambulance arrived, Fuller said. He was conscious and talking, she said on cross-examination.
Rasor, who lived in Durham with his wife, loved talking with people and didn’t want to retire, his family has said. He was a U.S. Army veteran and had worked as an entrepreneur in Florida and New Jersey, according to previous reports.
He worked about 20 hours a week and didn’t have problems doing his job, which required standing and some lifting, Fuller said.
Corey Smith, Home Depot’s district manager for asset protection, said he also was called to the store, arriving that afternoon.
The store keeps Ryobi pressure washers locked behind bars, Smith said, and customers have to get an associate to take the item to the register or hold the item until they are ready to pay.
He did not say whether anyone had checked the bin to see if it was still locked. However, he was able to determine from the store’s sales log that no power washers were sold that day, Smith said.
Hillsborough police investigator Andrew Jones, who was handed the case on Oct. 19, testified that police did not interview any Home Depot employees or Rasor, because the incident was captured on video.
Videos lead to suspect, arrest
The suspect remained a mystery, even after the town of Hillsborough offered a $10,000 reward, bringing in tips from all over the country, Jones said. But then Brown contacted police, and Jones obtained videos that she had taken with her phone during arguments with McMillian, he said. The videos were shown to the jury Thursday.
In the first video, the man Jones identified as McMillian, admitted to the robbery and assault — “by context,” Nieman said — while sitting in the driver’s seat of a black car. The woman, identified as Brown, argued with him, asking if he was “ready to go to jail for killing a man” rather than support his kids. The man drove away as she told him that she was recording his confession.
The other video showed only a black screen and appeared to be a phone conversation between a man and a woman, identified as McMillian and Brown. In the call, they argued about whether the assault was murder.
The man responded, “All I did was push him down. I ain’t going to get no murder charge.”
McMillian, who remained unfazed most of the day as he wrote down notes for his attorney, looked down and swiveled his chair back and forth while the videos were played.
McMillian was arrested in January 2023 at the Durham Ridge assisted-living facility where he worked. Jones said he interviewed McMillian at the Durham County Sheriff’s Office and also helped to search his car, which turned out to be a black Hyundai Sonata.
On closer inspection, police discovered the car had been painted, he said, but the door jamb and the trunk were still white.
The case will continue Friday morning.
