Larry Milton Gragg was a 55-year-old White/Caucasian man from Collettsville, North Carolina, whose life ended in a shooting in the Globe Community of Caldwell County on June 22, 2019. Gragg was born January 12, 1964, in Caldwell County to Larry W. Gragg and Marilyn Collins Gragg. He had established himself locally as the owner of Milton Gragg Grading, LLC, and lived along Anthony Creek Road.
His obituary described a family that included his parents, his son Jordan, his daughter Emily, his significant other Iris Whitt, a brother and sister, and a grandson who had not yet been born. He had previously lost his wife, Lynn M. Gragg, and a son, Benjamin.
The events leading to Gragg's death unfolded on the evening of Saturday, June 22. At approximately 7:24 p.m., Caldwell County sheriff's deputies were dispatched to a reported shooting in the 5600 block of Anthony Creek Road in the Globe Community, west of Lenoir. When deputies reached the scene, they found Gragg already deceased. Early reports provided few details about what had occurred immediately before the gunfire, and authorities did not publicly announce a motive or explain what dispute, if any, preceded the shooting. The case was immediately treated as a homicide investigation.
Investigators quickly focused on Richard Lee Crump, then 56, who was identified as a resident of Globe Road in Lenoir. By the following day, Caldwell County authorities announced that Crump had been arrested and charged with murder in connection with Gragg's death. He was taken to the Caldwell County Detention Center and initially held without bond. The sheriff's office characterized the investigation as continuing, while contemporary news reports emphasized that authorities had not yet disclosed what they believed caused the confrontation or what relationship or circumstances connected Gragg and Crump before the shooting. No additional suspect was publicly identified in the reports located concerning the case.
The murder charge eventually led to a jury trial more than four years after the shooting. During the proceedings, evidence included security-camera footage that Gragg's family said had captured at least part of the incident. The recording was shown to jurors, giving them evidence from the scene as they considered the prosecution against Crump. After deliberating for more than a day, the jury returned a not-guilty verdict in September 2023. Crump was therefore acquitted of the charge arising from Gragg's death and was not convicted of murdering him.
The acquittal brought the criminal prosecution that had begun with Crump's 2019 arrest to an end without a murder conviction. Publicly available reporting located for the case does not identify another person who was subsequently arrested or charged for Gragg's killing, nor does it report a later conviction of another suspect. What began as a Saturday-evening shooting call on Anthony Creek Road thus developed into a homicide investigation, an immediate murder arrest, years of pending criminal proceedings, and ultimately a jury trial in which the sole publicly identified defendant was found not guilty.
