Kenneth Junior French, 1993

On the night of August 6, 1993, a man stepped out of a truck near Luigi’s Restaurant and the Kroger super­mar­ket in Cumberland County, North Carolina. The man car­ried a pump shot­gun and was wear­ing shorts, a T‑shirt and a hunt­ing vest. A wit­ness stat­ed that there appeared to be a bot­tle of beer in his hunt­ing vest. The man sud­den­ly began fir­ing in the direc­tion of the Kroger store. He then walked to the back of the restau­rant and entered through the kitchen area.

He then went to the restau­rant prop­er, hol­ler­ing ​“freeze.” Patrons began run­ning out the door and hid­ing under the tables. The man walked through the restau­rant and killed four peo­ple and wound­ed numer­ous oth­ers, often fir­ing right in peo­ple’s faces after they asked for mercy.

A Fayetteville police offi­cer who was work­ing as an off-duty guard for Kroger’s, heard the shots and, after call­ing for back­up, entered the restau­rant and shot the man hold­ing the gun. When anoth­er offi­cer approached, the man with the gun raised it and the offi­cer fired twice. Finally, an offi­cer removed the shot­gun and placed the man under arrest. He was tak­en to a hos­pi­tal for surgery.

There was lit­tle doubt about who had com­mit­ted the crime. The man who was arrest­ed at the scene of the crime was Kenneth Junior French, a 22-year-old mechan­ic in the Army, who had obtained the rank of Sergeant E‑5. He had recent­ly moved into a trail­er rent­ed by his fiancee, Elaine Sears, and her two chil­dren. At the time of the crime, Ms. Sears and her chil­dren were out of state.

The defen­dant was charged with four counts of first degree mur­der, eight counts of assault with a dead­ly weapon with the intent to kill inflict­ing seri­ous injury, and one count of dis­charg­ing a firearm into an occu­pied build­ing. The defen­dant plead­ed not guilty to all counts. After a request by the defen­dan­t’s appoint­ed attor­ney, the tri­al was moved to New Hanover County.

Jury selec­tion in the case began on February 14, 1994 and the guilt-or-inno­cence phase of the tri­al was com­plet­ed by the end of March. The jury then delib­er­at­ed for two and a half days and returned a ver­dict of guilty of four counts of first degree mur­der on the basis of pre­med­i­ta­tion and delib­er­a­tion, guilty of three counts of assault with a dead­ly weapon with intent to kill, guilty of four counts of assault with a dead­ly weapon inflict­ing seri­ous injury, and guilty of oth­er lesser counts.

The jury was then pre­sent­ed with tes­ti­mo­ny relay­ing aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence. The aggra­vat­ing evi­dence attempt­ed to show that the crime was espe­cial­ly heinous, atro­cious, or cru­el; that the defen­dant know­ing­ly cre­at­ed a risk of death to more than one per­son; and that the mur­der was part of a course of con­duct which includ­ed oth­er crimes of vio­lence against oth­er per­sons. The mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence is pre­sent­ed in the sec­tion about the defendant below.

Willie McCormick, a cook in the restau­rant, was the first per­son shot, when he tried to walk away from the defen­dant. He did not die.

Pete Parrous, the pro­pri­etor of the restau­rant, approached the man and asked him not to hurt any­one. He was shot in the face and died instant­ly. As Mr. Parrous fell to the ground, his wife, Ethel Parrous, stood up scream­ing. She was killed and fell by her daugh­ter, Connie Kotsopoulos, who began scream­ing and was shot in the thigh.

Wesley Cover, who had been tend­ing to a patron who had been hit by a pel­let from the shoot­ing, asked the man with the gun not to hurt the woman he was help­ing because she was preg­nant. Mr. Cover was shot in the head and died quick­ly. The woman was also shot, but not fatally.

James Kidd was cov­er­ing his son and hid­ing in a booth. The man shot Mr. Kidd, who died almost imme­di­ate­ly. The son was not phys­i­cal­ly harmed. Other patrons were wound­ed in the incident.

The fol­low­ing facts about Kenneth French were pre­sent­ed to the jury con­sid­er­ing his ultimate sentence:

On August 5, 1993 after work, Ken French went with three friends to sev­er­al bars near Ft. Bragg, con­sum­ing a great deal of alco­hol before return­ing to the bar­racks around 3 AM on August 6. French got up that morn­ing around 9 AM. He vis­it­ed some friends, played with their chil­dren, got a hair­cut, rent­ed some videos and returned to the trail­er where he was liv­ing. He start­ed watch­ing TV and drink­ing beer. In par­tic­u­lar, he watched a Clint Eastwood video, ​“The Unforgiven,” imi­tat­ing some of the drink­ing and shoot­ing that was going on in the movie.

At one point, he called an old girl­friend, who report­ed that he sound­ed strange. He also called his moth­er in Florida, dur­ing which call he start­ed cry­ing and apol­o­giz­ing for not pre­vent­ing the spousal abuse that he wit­nessed his father direct towards her. He also said he could have pre­vent­ed the sex­u­al abuse and rape of his sis­ter by his father. His moth­er was so con­cerned that she offered to come to con­sole him, but he said he was all right.

Ken French has no fur­ther mem­o­ry of the events that then tran­spired, oth­er than he remem­bered putting guns into his truck and he remem­bered shoot­ing an old­er woman. French went from his trail­er to a near­by par­ty, where oth­ers report­ed that he drove errat­i­cal­ly and that he was car­ry­ing sev­er­al beers and a bot­tle of whiskey and that he was hyper­ac­tive. He was over­heard telling some chil­dren at the par­ty to ​“shoot or kill” Black peo­ple (using a pejorative term).

French con­tin­ued act­ing strange­ly and alarmed those who saw him. He told a friend he want­ed to go to a part of town fre­quent­ed by Black peo­ple and that a Black man had ​“raped his sister.”

Evidence pre­sent­ed dur­ing the penal­ty phase of the tri­al includ­ed infor­ma­tion attempt­ing to show that French had no sig­nif­i­cant his­to­ry of pri­or crim­i­nal activ­i­ty, that he was rel­a­tive­ly young at the time of the crime, that he had a good rep­u­ta­tion in the com­mu­ni­ties in which he lived, that he was a prod­uct of a vio­lent and chaot­ic home, and that he accept­ed respon­si­bil­i­ty for the shootings.