By Staff
Friend of the victim responds to incident
By CHRISTINA HALE, Staff Writer
A suspect was identified Thursday in the Monday night shooting of Doris Patricia Brooks Clark, but is still at large. Officials are looking for Kam Parker, 18, who is wanted for murder and armed robbery, according to the Washington Police Department.
Lt. William Chrismon said the armed robbery charge is from a separate incident.
Parker is known to frequent multiple addresses in Washington and Pitt County, according to a press release. Chrismon said police are hoping Parker “will turn himself in or call us and we’ll come and pick him up.”
Parker is accused of murdering Clark, 52, of Hudnell Street in Washington. Her body was discovered inside her car Monday just before 6 p.m. near West Seventh and Market streets in Washington. She was pronounced dead at the scene from a gunshot wound to the chest, according to a press release.
Red Bunting lives on Seventh Street, half a block from where Clark was found. A friend of the family, Bunting said in an phone interview Wednesday, “Doris was a good woman and a good mother.”
Bunting said he heard, on a police scanner in his home about the incident soon after it happened. “I went out there and … saw the car. I knew whose car it was,” he said.
Police suspect that the shooting was drug-related, according to a press release.
Bunting said, “That made me mad.” He said Clark was “an innocent bystander” who was turning at the intersection. “Doris never used drugs … and I knew her for 10 years or longer,” he said.
Chrismon said, “We stand by our statement,” but wouldn’t comment further on the drug element of the crime.
Bunting said he had witnessed drug activity in the neighborhood. “They stay on that corner and sell drugs. I don’t understand why they don’t do something about it,” he said.
Demond Latrace Drayton, 26, of W. Seventh St., Washington, was arrested near his home Tuesday, one day after Clark was killed, and charged with possession with intent to sell and deliver cocaine, according to a report from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.
Chrismon said in a previous interview with the Daily News that police have identified problems in the neighborhood and have increased patrols in that area. He asks community residents to report any criminal activity.
Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Kam Parker is asked contact the Washington Police Department at 946-1444, Beaufort County Crime Stoppers at 974-6400 or the local law-enforcement agency as soon as possible.