[chris]

Kyle Harris, a 19-year-old University of North Carolina at Greensboro student, was shot in the chest and killed during an armed robbery at Cumberland Pawn Shop in Fayetteville on Nov. 6, 2010, according to reporting by WRAL and later court records. Harris, a sophomore sociology major, had been working weekends at the shop to help pay for school.

Fayetteville police were sent to the store on Grove Street shortly before 5:30 p.m. after two 911 calls, recordings of which were later released. A passerby told a dispatcher it looked like "some people just went in and stole something and took off running," describing a car that sped away. A pawn shop employee who ran to a neighboring beauty supply store to reach police reported, "We just got robbed. Somebody came in with a gun and shot one of our employees."

Investigators said the killing was random. Cedric Theodis Hobbs Jr. and Alexis Mattocks, who were traveling with their 9-month-old child, had been driving an SUV that broke down and went to the pawn shop because they needed another vehicle, police said. After the shooting the two fled in Harris's silver Saturn Ion. Detectives said the same handgun had been fired hours earlier during a killing in McDuffie County, Georgia, where the couple stole a vehicle before it broke down.

Hobbs and Mattocks were arrested the next day in Washington, D.C., according to WRAL. Fayetteville investigators said Hobbs confessed to Harris's killing and to the Georgia homicide.

Mattocks pleaded guilty on April 4, 2013, to first-degree murder, kidnapping, robbery with a dangerous weapon and conspiracy to commit armed robbery, and was sentenced to life in prison without parole, court records show. She had rejected an earlier offer to plead to second-degree murder and testify against Hobbs.

A Cumberland County jury convicted Hobbs of first-degree murder and related robbery charges on Dec. 12, 2014. Because jurors could not agree unanimously on a death sentence, he was sentenced to life without parole, according to a later opinion of the North Carolina Supreme Court.

Hobbs's appeal became a closely watched test of racial bias in North Carolina jury selection. In May 2020 the state Supreme Court ordered a new hearing on his claim that prosecutors had improperly struck Black jurors. After a trial court again found no violation, the Supreme Court affirmed that ruling in a 3-2 decision on April 6, 2023, leaving his conviction and life sentence in place.