Anthony Shearin, 24, male, Black/African American, died on August 27, 2025, after a midday shooting at the New Dixie Mart gas station—long known locally as Presto—on Julian R. Allsbrook Highway in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. Police said officers were called just after 1 p.m., finding one man dead outside the store and another inside; authorities later identified the victims as Anthony Shearin and 19-year-old Dasean L. Banks.
Local television and newspaper reports described a heavy law-enforcement response and precautionary school lockdowns in the area following the gunfire. An obituary posted days later confirmed that Anthony Shearin, 24, “departed this life on August 27, 2025,” and scheduled his services for early September.
Investigators quickly focused on the hours leading up to the shooting. According to Roanoke Rapids Police Chief Lawrence Wiggins, the initial inquiry indicated that Anthony Shearin, 24, male, and Banks had fought the night before. On Wednesday afternoon, Banks returned to the store with another man and confronted Anthony Shearin, 24, male, inside, igniting a fresh altercation that escalated to gunfire. The sequence of events—an earlier dispute, a confrontation at the store, and the abrupt violence—became the central narrative guiding the first public updates from police.
Within hours of the crime, officers arrested 26-year-old Ju-Quan Letrae Rawles on an obstruction-of-justice charge. A warrant filed by an RRPD lieutenant alleged that Rawles left the scene, changed clothes, and concealed the weapon used, and set a first court date for September 3. Two days later, on August 29, police secured two counts of murder against Rawles in connection with the deaths of Anthony Shearin, 24, male, and Banks. Authorities publicly stated that the working theory was that Rawles shot and killed Anthony Shearin, 24, male, during the confrontation sparked by the previous night’s fight, and that both victims died from the shooting at the store.
As tributes appeared online, memorial pages recorded that Anthony Shearin, 24, male, was lost to gun violence on August 27, 2025, in Roanoke Rapids, with the obituary listing funeral arrangements in Halifax County the following month. These remembrances paralleled the formal record of the investigation, which, as of late August 2025, had named a single suspect—Ju-Quan Letrae Rawles—facing two murder counts after the initial obstruction arrest.
