A South Carolina jury on Wednesday heard opening statements in the murder trial of store owner Chikei Rick Chow, who is charged in the 2023 fatal shooting of 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton in Columbia. The case opened with a stark split: prosecutors said Chow shot the boy in the back during a foot chase over four bottles of water, while defense lawyers said he fired one shot to protect his son.
Byron E. Gipson, the prosecutor, put the case to jurors in blunt terms. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what is the value of a human life?” he asked, then told them, “But on May 28, 2023, Chikei Rick Chow, the defendant in this case, determined that Cyrus Carmack-Belton’s life was worth less than four bottles of water.” He said Chow chased the 14-year-old more than 130-plus yards down a road while armed with a pistol, then shot him in the back and tried to recast the killing as self-defense.
Jack Swerling, for the defense, said the evidence would show a different chain of events. He told jurors, “If he didn’t have that weapon, he never would have had a weapon to draw on Andy Chow,” and said Chow believed his son was in immediate danger. Chow had a concealed weapons permit, and his lawyers said Carmack-Belton pointed a semiautomatic pistol at Andy Chow before the shooting. Swerling added, “Nobody’s saying everybody’s happy about this, but unfortunately there are occasions in human life when someone has to exercise that right of self-defense or defense of others.”
The trial is the first chance for both sides to test those claims in public after a killing that triggered grief and anger in Richland County, where nearly half the population is Black. The shooting happened on May 28, 2023, and protesters came to Chow’s store the next day demanding justice. The opening day also laid out a detail that may matter to jurors later: after the shooting, Chow performed CPR on Carmack-Belton. Police records showed Chow had shot at shoplifters twice in the previous eight years, though the available record does not show charges filed after those episodes.
That clash leaves the jury with a narrow question that will shape the rest of the trial: whether Chow was a man who chased down a teen over a suspected theft, or a father who reacted in a split second to protect his son. Prosecutors say Carmack-Belton never threatened anyone with the pistol because it fell to the ground during the chase. The defense says that missing moment is the whole case. For now, the trial has begun where it will be decided, with those two versions of one fatal second facing each other in court.
