New details emerge in WCC shooting
By John Joyce
Published in News on April 18, 2015 10:34 PM
New information emerged Friday detailing the last moments of 44-year-old Wayne Community College print shop supervisor Ron Lane's life.
Lane died on the college campus Monday from a single gunshot wound inflicted by a former work study student whom college officials said was let go due to poor attendance.
A search warrant application filed by the Goldsboro Police Department states a witness was present with Lane in the third floor work study room of the print shop when Kenneth Morgan Stancil III, 20, entered -- armed with a pistol grip pump shotgun -- and began cusring at Lane.
According to the document, Lane repeatedly apologized before Stancil pulled the trigger. Lane died at the scene.
Stancil fled in a green 1994 BMW, returned to the home he shared with his mother and siblings in Dudley, then changed clothes and drove south on I-95 on a motorcycle. Investigators later revealed the motorcycle stalled near Lumberton, forcing Stancil to walk for some distance before hitchhiking the rest of the way to Florida.
Stancil made it as far south as Daytona Beach, Fla., before he was arrested. By Thursday, Stancil -- who by then had confessed in a Florida courtroom to killing Lane over allegations he made sexual advances toward Stancil's younger brother, a minor -- was back in Wayne County.
Stancil disrupted his first appearance with a violent outburst after the presiding judge, Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Arnold O. Jones, advised him not to use profanity in the courtroom.
After he was physically removed by deputies from the courtroom, attorneys representing Stancil at the request of the defendant's family advised their client to remain civil during the proceedings.
Stancil was arraigned on a single count of first-degree murder and permanently assigned a court-appointed attorney, local defense lawyer Walter Webster.
Webster, one of the attorneys who initially represented Stancil, said after the first appearance that he and fellow defense attorney Worth T. Haithcock II, had been asked to lend preliminary counsel to Stancil.
Webster will now have his hands full in representing Stancil in what could become a death penalty case pending the outcome of a Rule 24 hearing that has yet to be scheduled.
The evidence against Stancil includes three separate confessions -- the courtroom confession in Florida and two confessions taken into evidence by the Goldsboro Police Department, one handwritten and one video-recorded.
Other items listed among the inventory of evidence collected by investigators include two types of shotgun shells, 19 boxes of .223 caliber ammunition, a black coat and duffle bag, a cell phone, school supplies, a blue coat with various patches, five camcorder tapes, a video recorder, a white pride flag, family photos and three koozies. Also listed were a black belly band holster, a knee brace, a pack of Doral Light 100s cigarettes, a Ku Klux Klan box with a knife and button, four folding knives, four Zippo lighters, an AR-15 assault rifle and a 5.56 mm caliber weapon.
Stancil is next scheduled to appear in the afternoon session of Wayne County District Court April 29.