Marvin Jacob Lee, the man behind the Catawba County fatal shooting, has been arrested. Lee, who was under the influence, shot and killed Jefferson Heavner, a good Samaritan and new father, who was trying to help him after his car spun out and crashed on an icy road road in Catawba County, North Carolina.
Marvin Jacob Lee, the 27-year-old man responsible for the Catawba County fatal shooting may have been drunk and high during the incident. On Friday night, many motorists faced the monster snow storm/blizzard named Jonas, which dumped up to 40 inches of snow on the East Coast, killed 19 people, and forced 12,000 flight cancellations.
According to authorities, Lee was driving in the historic storm when his vehicle slid off an icy North Carolina highway. A group of motorists including Jefferson Heavner, 27, stopped to help him. The drivers were joined by several residents of Catawba, who witnessed the accident.
The good Samaritans rapidly decided to call the police for assistance when Lee became hostile and aggressive, according to Sheriff Coy Reid. Reid said that the group assumed that Lee was intoxicated or high on illegal substances, and added:
“They thought he was drunk or on dope and said “Let’s just call the law and let them deal with it'”
However, when the driver of the car heard them speaking to the police, he began shooting with an automatic pistol. The Samaritans ran, but Heavner was shot and fell. According to the Sheriff’s Office, Lee approached and continued firing on the downed victim and killed him.
After murdering the innocent man, Lee returned to the vehicle and refused to come out, prompting the police to call a SWAT team. The SWAT team eventually discovered that he was passed out. Lee woke up as he was physically pulled out of the car by SWAT members and tried to fight with them. Heavner’s sister, Jesse Danielle Heaver, has since taken to Facebook to express her heartbreak and shock at the young father’s death. Miss Heaver and her father often pulled cars out of ditches in bad weather to help others. She wrote:
“I’d thought of you several times today while driving the roads of Asheville and seeing cars in ditches, thinking of old times with daddy. Aside from off-roading in the snow that was always our favorite part. Never in a million years would I have dreamed that ironically you were lying cold, gunned by a murderer who you had just attempted to help like we always did.”
Lee has since been charged with murder. The Catawba County fatal shooting remains under investigation. It has sparked an intense debate about guns in America. Some say, more of them are needed to protect people like Heavner, while others believe they have to be taken away to keep the population safe from dangerous individuals.
What do you think of Marvin Jacob Lee’s actions?
