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A North Carolina man who chased down the robber who had gone after his wife and ran the man over several times with his SUV was convicted of second-degree murder, according to court records and news accounts of the case.

The confrontation began on the night of Friday, Feb. 22, 2008, outside Primo Pizza on Yadkin Road in Fayetteville, police said. Anna Moretti was in the parking lot when Aaron Lazarus McLeod, 28, approached her with a knife and tried to rob her. She knocked the knife away, according to a later state appeals court opinion.

Her husband, Stanton Mark Moretti Jr., 41, of nearby Raeford, came out of the restaurant with a handgun and fired several shots as McLeod ran off down Horseshoe Road, authorities said. Moretti then got into his GMC Yukon, caught up with McLeod and struck him repeatedly. Police said he hit the man at least three times; the appeals court opinion said Moretti ran over McLeod at least four times, "continuing to strike Mr. McLeod until he stayed down."

Two men who saw the pursuit called 911 as it happened. "Oh, he's running over him again," one of the men said on the call. The two shouted from their window for Moretti to stop.

McLeod was taken to UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill and died the following Monday. Moretti, first booked on an assault charge, was charged with first-degree murder after McLeod died and was ordered held without bond at the Cumberland County Detention Center.

Prosecutors argued the killing went well beyond any defense of his wife. The appeals court opinion said that after the attack Moretti used a racial slur about McLeod and said he hoped the man was dead.

Moretti pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in May 2011 but withdrew the plea a day later, telling reporters "Freedom" as he left the courtroom. He went to trial that August, and a Cumberland County jury convicted him of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 180 to 225 months in prison. The North Carolina Court of Appeals upheld the conviction in February 2013.