The State Built Its Foundation on Day 1. The Defense Planted Its Seeds.

Cyrus Carmack-Belton picked up the water and put it back. A Richland County jury saw it on the convenience store's own surveillance footage today. That moment is the foundation of what the state spent the rest of Day 1 building.

Rick Chow's murder trial opened in Columbia this week. Two years and 364 days after Chow shot a 14-year-old in the back on Spring Tree Drive, after three denied bond motions, after a Stand Your Ground immunity hearing that did not go the defense's way, twelve jurors and four alternates finally sat down to hear the state's case. They heard from a deputy, a video analyst, and two civilian eyewitnesses who had never met before May 28, 2023, and who had no stake in this trial three years later.

By the time the courtroom recessed, the state had built something. Not the whole case. Day 1 is never the whole case. But it built a foundation, and the foundation looks like this. Nobody at the scene said the gun was pointed. Rick Chow's own cameras show Cyrus never took anything. And the chase ended with a 14-year-old running for his life with nothing in his hands.

The defense did what defense does on Day 1. It planted seeds. A Rule 106 fight to try to get more of Rick Chow's body camera statement to police in front of the jury. A cross of the grandmother that got her to agree Chow tried to save Cyrus's life afterward. A cross of the daughter that played her own 911 call back to her and read her own written statement out loud and made her sit with the gap between then and now. Seeds are not a defense case. But seeds are not nothing, either.

Here is what happened on Day 1 of SC v. Rick Chow, witness by witness, and what it means for the trial that just started.

The First Deputy

The first witness the state called was the first cop to walk up to a 14-year-old's body that night. Deputy Derek English worked patrol for the Richland County Sheriff's Department in May 2023. He arrived at the scene on Spring Tree Drive before backup did. He talked to Rick Chow at the scene. He went back to the store with the lead investigator that same night and stood there while Chow operated his own surveillance system and walked them through what had happened inside.

English's testimony did two things for the state. First, it gave the jury the scene through a sworn officer's eyes. The body camera footage. The shell casing. The backpack in the drainage ditch. The laser tack light. The drone footage of the chase route. Standard foundation testimony that you cannot try a homicide case without.

The second thing it did is what is going to come back in closing arguments.

The prosecutor asked English, almost casually, what Rick Chow had told him at the scene. English told the jury that Chow had said his son had seen a gun. Not that Chow had seen it. His son had.

Then the prosecutor asked the question. Who at the scene that night ever said anything about Cyrus pointing a gun at anyone?

Not the responding deputies. Not the witnesses who stopped to help. Not the eyewitnesses watching from their cars. Nobody.

That answer is the spine of the state's aggressor case. The legal theory the state is running, plainly stated by Senior Assistant Solicitor Dale Scott back at the November 2025 immunity hearing and repeated in opening statements this week, is that South Carolina self-defense protections are a shield, not a sword. The Chows picked up the sword when they chased a fleeing 14-year-old 139 yards down Spring Tree Drive. The state has to convince a jury that the chase made the Chows the aggressors and that the self-defense door shut behind them when they started running. English's testimony is the first brick in that wall.

WATCH ON YOUTUBE First Deputy on Scene: Nobody Said Cyrus Carmack-Belton Pointed a Gun →

The Defense Tries to Get Rick Chow's Side In

The defense came out of English's direct examination knowing it had a problem. The state had played the parts of Rick Chow's body camera statement that helped the state. The parts that helped the defense, the parts where Chow described what he saw and how it happened, had not been played.

So the defense made a move. Joe McCulloch, one of Chow's senior trial attorneys, invoked Rule 106 of the South Carolina Rules of Evidence, the rule of completeness. The argument was that if the state introduced a part of a recorded statement, the defense should be allowed to introduce the rest of it in fairness to a complete picture. The defense wanted the deputy to play more of Chow's body camera video, and specifically the body camera of a second deputy, Deputy Carter, that allegedly captured Chow describing the gun being pointed at his son.

The state objected. The defense pushed. The state objected harder. The jury was sent out. Judge Heath Taylor told the lawyers to stop accusing each other of ethical problems in his courtroom. Then he ruled.

The defense could not play it.

I want to be careful here, because the ruling matters and it matters in a way that the legal mechanics can obscure. Judge Taylor did not say Rick Chow's side is irrelevant. Judge Taylor did not say the jury does not get to hear from Rick Chow. What he said, in effect, is that if Rick Chow wants the jury to hear his account of what happened that night, he has to take the witness stand himself and tell it, under oath, subject to cross-examination by the state. The Rule 106 path the defense was trying to open is closed.

Rick Chow has a constitutional right to stay silent. The Fifth Amendment is not a courtesy. It is a structural protection that no judge and no prosecutor and no public opinion can take from him. He could sit silent for the entire trial and the burden would never once shift to him.

But the Constitution does not say the jury has to hear his side another way. If Rick Chow wants twelve people to weigh what he was thinking in the moment he pulled that trigger, the math of this trial just got a lot harder. He may have to take that stand. And taking that stand opens him to a cross-examination by Dale Scott that is going to be the hardest hour of his life.

This is the kind of legal fight the jury never gets to see. They were in the hallway when it happened. But this is where trials get decided. The procedural rulings that determine what twelve people are allowed to consider. Judge Taylor made a call today that could shape the entire shape of the defense. Watch what the defense does with it.

WATCH ON YOUTUBE Judge Denies Defense Bid to Play Rick Chow's Full Statement to Police →

The Cameras Show It

The state's next witness was Justin Martin, a video analyst with the Fifth Circuit Solicitor's Office. Almost ten years on the job. A two-year video production degree from Midlands Technical College. His job was to take 22 surveillance videos from inside Rick Chow's Xpress Mart, distill what mattered from hours of footage, and put it in a form the jury could follow.

The defense was ready for this one. Jack Swerling, on cross, made the point that Justin Martin had received guidance from the prosecutors about which moments to highlight. That Martin's PowerPoint compilation is, in Swerling's words, a distillation of the whole. That the editorial decisions about what the jury sees were made with input from the lawyers trying the case. Fair point. Swerling is a fifty-year veteran for a reason.

But the underlying footage is the underlying footage. And one moment on that footage is going to follow Rick Chow for the rest of this trial.

The moment a 14-year-old walked over to the cooler. The moment he picked up bottles of water. The moment he looked at them and put them back.

The lead investigator on this case, Todd Jordan of the Richland County Sheriff's Department, reviewed that same footage with Rick Chow at the store later that night. The jury heard those words on body camera earlier today during the deputy's testimony. Jordan's voice, on tape, in front of Rick Chow himself. "This is kind of the moment that y'all realize he never took anything."

Today Justin Martin showed the jury why he said it.

Not a robbery. Not a shoplifting. Not even a completed attempt. A 14-year-old picked up a drink and put it back. Two grown men chased him 139 yards down the road. The owner of the store shot him in the back.

The defense will argue, and is already arguing, that the legal question is not whether Cyrus actually took anything. The question is what the Chows reasonably believed at the moment they gave chase. Even an innocent person can be reasonably suspected. Maybe so. But the cameras in this case are not a third-party speculation. They are Rick Chow's own cameras. The footage that shows Cyrus never took the water is footage Chow himself walked the investigators through that night. He had eyes on the same evidence the jury just saw. What he did next is what put him in jail.

WATCH ON YOUTUBE Rick Chow's Own Cameras Caught Cyrus Putting the Water Back →

The Witnesses Who Could Not Be Coached

Then the state did something that changed the tone of the courtroom. It stopped calling deputies and analysts. And it started calling civilians.

Lori Ann Carson works for the United States Postal Service. She has worked there for almost 26 years. She is the grandmother of eight. She came to Columbia from Hopkinsville, Kentucky, by way of a military husband and a family she came to be with. On Memorial Day weekend in 2023, she was driving her daughter and her grandchildren home from The Little Mermaid when her daughter asked her to stop at a corner store for a drink. The drink she was getting was for her daughter. The store she stopped at was the Xpress Mart on the corner of Parklane and Spring Tree.

Lori Carson did not know Cyrus Carmack-Belton. She did not know Rick Chow. She did not know Andy Chow. She did not know anyone in this case. She had no stake in the outcome. She did not ask to be a witness. A subpoena made her one.

What she described from the witness stand is the kind of testimony juries hold onto. A 14-year-old running out of the front of the store in front of her car. A shoe flying off his foot. One hand pumping. The other holding his pants up. Two grown men behind him. Eyes that she described as scared.

Nothing in his hands.

And then the state did what the state does with a witness like this. It asked her to step down from the witness stand. To walk into the well of the courtroom in front of the jury. And to demonstrate, with her own body, what Rick Chow looked like in the moment before the shot. Body upright. Arms forward. The shooter's stance.

The defense, on cross, did what the defense had to do. Joe McCulloch went at the vantage point. The rolled-up windows. The 130 yards. Did Lori know Cyrus had a Taurus 9mm in his front pocket. She did not. Could she be sure what was in his hands from inside her vehicle. The defense made its record.

And then the defense planted its biggest seed of the day. Lori agreed, under oath, that Rick Chow had given mouth-to-mouth to Cyrus Carmack-Belton after the shot. That Chow had cleared leaves from the boy's mouth so chest compressions could be attempted. That the man who shot him also tried to save him.

The state took it back on redirect with surgical precision. Mr. Chow tried to save his life. Yes. And that is after Rick Chow shot him in the back. Yes.

Both things can be true. The defense will argue the mouth-to-mouth shows a man who never meant to kill, who reacted to a perceived threat to his son and then tried to undo what he had done. The state will argue you do not get credit for putting out a fire you started. The jury is going to have to weigh which of those frames matters more, and they are going to have to do it in a deliberation room after closing arguments. For now, that seed is in the ground.

WATCH ON YOUTUBE Grandmother Tells Jury Cyrus Carmack-Belton Had Nothing in His Hands →

The Credibility Fight

The last witness of Day 1 was Kennedy Carson. Lori's daughter. Thirty years old. A lockbox processor at TD Bank, where she has worked in multiple roles for over a decade. The mother of the child who was beside her in the back seat of her mother's BMW SUV that night.

Kennedy was riding in the backseat when the chase happened. The angle her mother could not see, she could see. The angle from inside the vehicle the chase ran past. She told the jury what she watched. A 14-year-old running. A fall. Then a second fall. And then a crawl across Spring Tree Drive to the place where he died.

The crawl was new. Lori had not seen the crawl from where she was. Kennedy had.

And then Jack Swerling stood up.

This is what experienced defense attorneys do at trial. They do not yell. They do not flail. They put a witness on a small piece of ground and they walk her around in tight circles until she is dizzy and the jury sees it. Swerling did not yell at Kennedy Carson. He played her 911 call from May 28, 2023, in open court, on the record, in front of the jury. The Kennedy of 2023 told the dispatcher that night that she did not know who shot Cyrus. Then he read her written statement from 9:23 PM that same night. The Kennedy of 2023, in her own words, said the boy got back up and tried to run. The statement did not mention a crawl.

The Kennedy of 2026 testified to a crawl. The Kennedy of 2023, on the phone with 911 and on paper with the deputies, did not.

Kennedy explained the gap. She did not want to be involved. She was made to be involved. The night of the shooting she was a young mother in the back seat of her own mother's car who had just watched something she could not unsee, and she did not want her name on it. Three years later, under subpoena, she had no choice.

The state recovered her on redirect. It was still daylight at 8 PM that night. She saw what she saw. Cyrus had nothing in his hands. Rick Chow shot him. Kennedy said all of it again, under oath, looking at the jury.

But the questions Swerling planted are now in the courtroom. If she did not tell the dispatcher she saw it, can the jury believe she is telling them now. If she did not write down the crawl in 2023, is she remembering it in 2026, or filling it in. Those questions do not disappear just because the state asked them again on redirect. They go back to the jury room.

Credibility fights take time to unfold. We are not going to know what the jury thought about Kennedy Carson until they come back with a verdict. But the defense made the deposit. Watch for where Swerling pulls on that thread in closing.

WATCH ON YOUTUBE 'I Don't Know Who Shot Him': Defense Plays Witness Her Own 911 Call →

Where Day 1 Leaves the Trial

Here is the honest read on Day 1.

The state won the day on volume and on foundation. The Chows chased a 14-year-old 139 yards down Spring Tree Drive over a shoplifting that did not happen. Two civilian eyewitnesses with no skin in this case said Cyrus had nothing in his hands. The first deputy on the scene said no one ever told him the gun was pointed. Rick Chow's own surveillance footage shows the moment he put the water back. That is a foundation. The state is laying brick on top of brick.

The defense did what the defense had to do. It made the record on vantage point and visibility. It got the grandmother to agree, on cross, that Rick Chow tried to save the life of the boy he had just shot. It planted the credibility seed on the daughter with her own 911 call and her own written statement. And it fought, hard, to get the rest of Rick Chow's body camera account in through Rule 106. That last fight is lost. The defense is going to have to come back to that one, and they are going to have to think about whether their client takes the stand.

The cluster fingerprint of this case has not moved. A father and son chased a 14-year-old they wrongly accused of stealing water, and the father shot him in the back. Five witnesses on Day 1 all worked, in their own ways, to nail that frame to the wall. The defense is going to spend the next several days trying to pry one of the nails loose. We will see if they can.

None of this is a verdict. Being unpopular is not a verdict. Being denied bond is not a verdict. Being denied immunity is not a verdict. Sitting in the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center for the better part of three years is not a verdict. The only verdict that counts is the one twelve jurors reach at the end of this trial after the State of South Carolina proves its case beyond a reasonable doubt, or fails to. Rick Chow is presumed innocent. The presumption of innocence is not a weather report that only applies on sunny days. It applies hardest in cases exactly like this one.

My father spent his life on that idea. He was a West Virginia criminal defense attorney for 23 years. The system came for him twice for standing on the principle that due process and the presumption of innocence are for everyone, including the people the public most wants to see crushed. The second time, the system criminally convicted him for teaching ordinary people their constitutional rights, for free, from a coffee shop in Martinsburg. He never stopped. He believed, all the way down, that if the protection of the Constitution does not extend to the deeply unpopular defendant, it does not extend to anyone.

That is the lens we are taking into this trial. The state has to prove its case. The defense does not have to prove anything. Rick Chow does not have to take the stand. And the only question that matters for the next several weeks is whether the State of South Carolina can convince twelve jurors, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the bullet in Cyrus Carmack-Belton's back was not lawful self-defense.

Day 1 is in the books. The state has its foundation. The defense has its seeds. We are watching.