Senator shoots man at his home

Most people know R.C. Soles as the state's longest-serving senator. Over the past few years, however, he has been the central figure in a string of odd happenings, starting with former legal clients trespassing at his home and ending with him shooting one of them over the weekend, authorities say.

Soles, 74, a Democrat and soft-spoken attorney, has spent four decades in the General Assembly. Over the past two years, a house he paid for a former client to build himself has caught fire and young men he describes as former law clients have been charged with trespassing. A former client claimed recently that Soles molested him a decade ago, but the accuser later said he made the story up.

The latest — and most violent — confrontation was Sunday, when Soles shot Kyle Blackburn, 22, after he and Billie J. Wright, 23, tried to kick in the door of his Tabor City home, Columbus County Sheriff Chris Batten said. Soles' attorney said the senator fired a handgun. Blackburn is in fair condition and no charges have been filed.

Soles says he tries to help his neighbors and clients — some with criminal records or dysfunctional families — by giving them thousands of dollars to help them pay rent and college tuition and buy cars. Soles doesn't have a family and instead focuses on Tabor City and his Senate district, offering to help clients find jobs, places to live and drug treatment, his attorney, Joe Cheshire, said Monday.

"That is just who he is," Cheshire said. "That is why the people of this district continue to elect him."

Some of those neighbors in the town along the South Carolina line are starting to wonder just how well they really do know him.

"I never thought something like this would come up in a little small town like this," said Louise Elliott, a restaurant worker who has lived for 55 years in Tabor City, a town of 2,700 people in one of the state's poorest regions.

Cheshire says Soles was acting in self-defense and the shooting was captured by security cameras on the property. Soles declined to comment, citing the investigation.

Numbers listed for the men who came to Soles' house were either disconnected or answered by people who did not know them. However, Wright told WECT-TV in Wilmington that he went there to speak to Soles about taxes on a trailer he used to own.

"He did ask us to leave numerous times," Wright said. "Kyle had a few things to drink. They were arguing back and forth and he asked him to leave again. He didn't kill him, just a minor wound to his leg. I bandaged him up and drove him to the hospital."

State records show Blackburn was released from prison in June 2008 after serving a year and seven months for felony breaking and entering, communicating threats and several other misdemeanors.

He had been arrested in September 2008, accused of trespassing at Soles' home and breaking and entering. Wright was released from prison two weeks ago after serving nearly 2½ years for larceny and nearly a dozen misdemeanors, according to state records.

Soles has called local police for help at least nine times in the past two years to warn of five different men whom officers have charged with trespassing at his home, which is tucked away from the road among pine trees and encircled by a white fence with a tan iron gate. Often, Soles declined to press charges, but he did pepper-spray one of them, according to police reports and Soles.

Then there was the fire late last month. One former Soles client said he had to leap from the second floor of a house, built with contributions from Soles, when a blaze started there. Police have said it was likely arson.

And state investigators continue to look into Soles' relationship with a former client who, in a televised interview aired earlier this month, accused Soles of fondling him when the client was 15 years old.

The man, once charged with filing a false police report for claiming Soles hit him, recanted last week and said he was high on drugs when he did the interview.

Soles choked up after hearing the allegation had been withdrawn, saying it was a relief.

On Monday, cafes on Tabor City's main drag were crowded with farmers and workers sitting at tables scattered with newspapers from Wilmington and Myrtle Beach, S.C., whose front pages described the shooting. Locals said they like the work Soles has done for the area, such as the jobs that will come with a new prison being built nearby.

Said Richard Dameron, 62, whose family owns a drug store and who has known Soles all his life: "He tries to look out for the people in his district."

___

Dalesio reported from Raleigh, N.C.