Property Owner Kills Trespasser And Then House Burns To The Ground

Trespassing leads to a fatal shooting which then leads to a house fire - it all happened in Murphy, North Carolina recently and now investigators are trying to put all the pieces together.

So far no one has been arrested but one man has been killed, one house has been burned to the ground, and one town has more questions than answers.

The drive through Cherokee County can be quite tranquil, but things have been anything but calm recently on Boiling Springs Road. Sheriff Keith Lovin tells us that last week Gregory Oliver Abernathy and several other people took an ATV past a gate with a posted private property sign. That property belongs to James McKinley and at some point McKinley and Abernathy got into an altercation.

"The ATV people that went under the gate had been on the property for quit some time. As a result of that altercation the victim was shot and killed," Sheriff Lovin says.

While investigators have been collecting evidence in that case, several deputies responded to a separate incident yesterday. The sheriff tells us a man armed with a shot gun took off running after a car wreck near Boiling Springs Road and that's when they noticed something strange.

"We then got a call yesterday about noon from one of our deputies that he saw smoke coming from the area about where this was happening the other night," Lovin says.

When Sheriff's Deputies arrived at the property for the house fire they quickly realized it was the same property where the man was shot just a couple of days before. We're told McKinley's house burned to the ground and now an arson investigation is underway.

"Would you say it's suspicious at this point?" NewsChannel 9 Reporter Will Carr asks. "Yes it's very suspicious...you have these two incidents and you would naturally think they're interconnected," Lovin says.

Again no one has been arrested for any of the incidents on Boiling Springs Road. But the Sheriff tells us they have a reason to connect the man with the shotgun to the house fire. He tells us they have several people of interest in these cases and that he plans to turn his evidence over to the District Attorney's office soon.

The homeowner and his wife were not home during the house fire and we're told they have returned to one of their other homes in Georgia.