After two deputies were shot while serving an arrest warrant on a suspected murderer, Robeson County Sheriff Burnis Wilkins took a local judge to task for letting the man out on bond.
“I am 100% disgusted by certain parts of our judicial system,” the sheriff said in a news conference Tuesday. “This suspect was out on bond.”
“I feel the public’s frustration and the Sheriff’s frustration at the crime problem in Robeson County,” Angelica McIntyre, the chief district judge of Robeson County, said in a statement.
“My judicial record shows that I have set some of the highest bonds ever set in Robeson County based on the evidence before me,” she said.
The suspect, Shawn Locklear, 20, was arrested twice in 2022. He was charged in March of that year with armed robbery and then with murder in a November 2022 shooting, court records show.
There were dozens of police cars on the scene after the shooting Tuesday morning. (Spectrum News 1)
Locklear was released on a $250,000 bond and under house arrest after a hearing in April, the judge said.
“Bonds are determined by many factors, including the evidence that is presented in court by the officers, witness cooperation, if a felony report has been provided to the District Attorney’s Office, and the particular facts of every case,” she said.
The sheriff said deputies went out to the home near Maxton to arrest Locklear for violating the terms of his release. He ran when he saw deputies coming, Wilkins said.
“The disgusting part about all of this is, he’s out, after already committing a felony, an armed robbery, earlier,” the sheriff said.
“Had this guy been locked up where he was supposed to be, yes our jail is full, but I can make room for a murder suspect, I have never seen such a waste that murderers are walking around in this county the way they are,” he said.
Shawn Locklear shot the two deputies, Jonathan Walters, 37, and Kaelin Locklear, 23, in wooded area near Old Red Springs Road at about 9:30 a.m., the sheriff said. The suspect got in one of the sheriff’s office cars and reversed, running over a deputy’s leg, the sheriff said.
The suspect was shot four or five times, the sheriff said, and was found in a car not far from the scene.
Shawn Locklear was flown to UNC Health for treatment. The two deputies were taken to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center in Fayetteville, the sheriff said.
The judge who issued the bond said she was not allowed to comment on the merits of the case.
“I am allowed to confirm judicial proceedings which occurred, and proceedings in this case occurred in April 2023, where the defendant was given a 250,000 secured bond, in addition to house arrest through the pretrial release program. Another proceeding related to bond occurred in August 2023 before a different judge,” McIntyre said.
“After the dates of these proceedings in this case, I am grateful that North Carolina law changed effective October 1, 2023, to allow district court judges additional authority to deny bond to violent and repeat offenders as well as those on pretrial release who commit a new offense,” she said.