Lakim Faust, 23, has been indicted by a North Carolina grand jury after shooting four people in June, who he reportedly targeted specifically because they were white. His intention was to “inflict mass causalities,” according to reports.
According to WRAL.com, a grand jury indicted on Monday on 14 charges, including “four counts of attempted first-degree murder.”
An investigation included a search of his apartment and a confiscated computer; however, police have yet to reveal what evidence they obtained indicating a racial component to the June shooting of four people. All survived.
A man dressed in black left his apartment armed with a pistol-grip shotgun and 100 rounds of ammunition. Police said he had one goal; to cause mass destruction.
Just a couple hundred feet away from his apartment, the gunman stopped in front of the Kellum Law Firm. His first victim was 64-year-old Timothy Edwards. The Geico insurance adjuster had just left the law firm after dropping off a check and some paperwork.
Witnesses said he was sitting in his car in the parking lot when the shooter came up and shot him twice through his driver’s side window.
He was collecting between $700 and $800 a month in Social Security benefits at the tjme of his latest alleged crime. Faust’s first run in with the law appears to date all the way back to 2004 when he was only 14 and faced multiple charges including attempted first degree murder in Baltimore, Maryland. Those records are now sealed due to his age and it’s not possible to determine how the charges were resolved.
The (2004) Maryland charges included assault second degree, attempted first degree murder, attempted second degree murder, dangerous weapon with intent to injure and trespassing. The case was remanded to juvenile court and is sealed. There is no way to determine what became of the charges.
In 2006, Faust pleaded guilty to resisting an officer and second degree trespassing and served 74 days in jail for those offenses. He was charged again with trespassing and defrauding an innkeeper in 2007. The next year he was arrested for injury to real property and personal property. All of those cases were dismissed.
The Pitt County Sheriff’s Office says Faust had applied for a gun permit, but in August Sheriff Neil Elks rejected it because of his prior record. A Pitt Community College spokesman says Faust began working toward his GED in 2006. The college says later that year, the man was banned from the main campus for disrupting a classroom.
College police arrested him in September 2006 for violating that ban, as well as resist, obstruct and delay after giving police a false name. P.C.C. says Faust was arrested a second time for trespassing on its main campus that next January.
The college says in 2010 he began taking a Weatherization Tech program at an off-campus site, and while Faust completed the required hours in 2011, P.C.C. says he failed to take additional testing to get his certification.
ECU says the man worked at the Lucile Gorham Community Center for a year, beginning in 2010. He did maintenance and gardening and was paid by Youth@Work of Pitt County, a non-profit agency that helps youth obtain job skills.
At a Sunday morning news conference, Chief Hassan Aden said Faust had 100 rounds of shotgun ammunition at the scene where he was shot by police.
According to police, information they gathered shows Faust went from his apartment at 217 Hartford Street “with the intent to inflict mass casualties on innocent people.”