A White North Carolina man has been charged with first-degree murder after he allegedly ran over a Black man with his truck several times following an argument between the two over a bucket.
Narrating the incident to the Triad City Beat, Ryan Pressley, a resident at the Greensboro neighborhood where the September 20 incident occurred, said the suspect, Paul Steven Voss Jr., ran over the victim, Anthony Hill, 53, after he tried taking the bucket they were arguing over. Voss, 50, ran over Hill, leaving him hanging on the truck.
Though Hill later fell into some nearby limbs, Voss drove back and repeatedly run over him three more times. The suspect turned himself in to the police the same day.
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Though a spokesperson from the Greensboro Police Department told the news outlet they did not suspect the incident was racially motivated, Pressley said people alleged Voss did not like Black people.
“They said the man doesn’t like Black people; he just comes to buy crack,” he said. “He stays near here out in the country.”
Pressley also cited another incident where Voss allegedly almost ran over some teenagers. “He already tried to run over three teenagers near the bottom of Acorn,” he revealed. “The only reason they got away from him is he hit a fence and they were able to jump over the fence.”
A familiar face in the neighborhood, Pressley told the Triad City Beat his grandmother paid Hill $100 a few days back to trim some trees after the said job wasn’t completed by the initial worker.
“It’s crazy to think he did that job from my grandmother, and then he got thrown off that truck into those limbs, and then got run over right next to the limbs,” said Pressley.
Family and friends gathered at the scene days after the incident to hold a candlelight vigil for Hill, who was described by his aunt as a “good-hearted person” who “tried to help everybody”, News & Record reports.
“God loved him,” she said. “We loved him. I pray that this won’t happen again. I pray that this will never, ever happen again.”
“Anthony, when he walked through the neighborhood, no matter what time of day, he would wave,” another resident told the news outlet.
“Still seeing his blood on the road, that really affected me,” Spencer Blackwell, a Greensboro-based Coalition for Social Justice and Economic Reform organizer, said. “Whether it’s a cop killing or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s the fact that a Black man’s life was taken.”
