SC v. Rick Chow

The State of South Carolina charged Rick Chow, the owner of a Columbia convenience store, with a single count of murder in the shooting death of fourteen-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton. Prosecutors alleged that on a Memorial Day weekend evening in 2023, Chow and his adult son wrongly accused the teenager of stealing bottles of water, then chased him off the store property and well over a hundred yards down the road. The State alleged that Cyrus was running away, that the shoplifting accusation was baseless, and that Chow fired a single shot that struck the boy in the back and pierced his heart. In the prosecution's telling, a man who chose to pursue a fleeing child manufactured the danger he later claimed to fear, and self-defense was meant to be a shield, not a sword.

The trial centered on one question, and both sides largely agreed on the physical sequence around it: the chase, the gun that ended up on the ground, the one shot, the wound in the back. What they fought over was justification. The defense argued that Rick Chow was a father protecting his son, that Andy Chow genuinely believed the fleeing teenager was armed, and that South Carolina law permits deadly force to defend another person from imminent danger. The State argued the Chows were the aggressors who never should have given chase, and that no one outside the family ever saw a gun pointed at anyone. Body camera footage, witness accounts of Cyrus with his hands raised, and a video of the teenager with a gun the night before became the ground both sides fought on.

The case went to trial, and a jury found Rick Chow not guilty. That verdict is the reason this channel exists. We do not sit in that courtroom to convict or to acquit. We watch whether the State proves its case, whether the presumption of innocence holds up under public pressure, and whether the process treats an unpopular defendant the way the Constitution demands. A child died, a community grieved, and a jury still had to hold the State to its burden. The full record of how that unfolded, day by day, is documented in the complete coverage below.