The defendant was convicted of possession of a firearm by a felon, three counts of assault with a deadly weapon and seven counts of discharging a firearm into an occupied vehicle based on an incident in which he chased two women from his house and fired at the car of a Good Samaritan who stopped to assist the women on the highway.  

(1) Though the defendant did not object to the testimony at trial, he argued on appeal that the Good Samaritan should not have been permitted to testify as a lay witness that the shots were not fired from an automatic weapon. The court of appeals found no error in the admission of the testimony, which was based on the witness’s first-hand knowledge of the incident and his familiarity with the distinction between automatic and semi-automatic rifle fire, gained through decades of military service.

(2) Defendant argued on appeal that the State failed to prove the six additional shots fired into the truck after the first shot were discharged willfully or wantonly within the meaning of G.S. 14-34.1(b). The court of appeals rejected the defendant’s argument. The court noted that the Good Samaritan’s testimony provided evidence that the defendant did not use an automatic weapon but instead used a weapon that required him to pull and release the trigger (and thus employ his thought process) each time he decided to shoot into the occupied truck. In addition, testimony from the Good Samaritan and one of the women established that the shooting continued over an identifiable period of time, as opposed to occurring in a rapid burst of gunfire.

Finally, the court of appeals dismissed the defendant’s argument that he had been sentenced in violation of his right to be free from double jeopardy on the basis that the defendant failed to preserve the argument by objecting a trial.