Ron Dwight Lane, a 44-year-old man from Goldsboro, North Carolina, tragically lost his life on April 13, 2015. Lane, who was employed as a print shop supervisor at Wayne Community College, was fatally shot in the head with a pistol-grip shotgun at around 8 a.m. on the college campus. The incident occurred in the print shop on the third floor of the building that also houses the school library and cafeteria.
The suspect in the case, Kenneth Morgan Stancil III, a 20-year-old former student
of Wayne Community College, was arrested the following day in Daytona Beach, Florida. Stancil, who had recently tattooed a neo-Nazi symbol on his face, was found sleeping on a beach with a knife in his hand. He was taken into custody by the Volusia County Beach Patrol.
Stancil was a third-year welding student who had been dismissed from the work/study program at the college for repeated absences. He entered the campus print shop shortly after Lane arrived for work and shot him once with a pistol-grip 12-gauge shotgun. Stancil later claimed that Lane had made inappropriate sexual advances toward him, which he said was the motive for the shooting.
The case was investigated as a possible hate crime due to Stancil's white supremacist beliefs and the fact that Lane was a gay man. Stancil was ultimately sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of Ron Dwight Lane. The tragic incident left the Wayne Community College community in mourning, and classes were canceled the day after Lane's death as students and staff gathered to remember him.
