Agustin Alberto Villalon Luna, a 39-year-old Hispanic man from Mount Airy, North Carolina, was killed on the morning of December 6, 2023, in a shooting at the Mayberry Mart gas station at the corner of East Pine Street and Riverside Drive. According to local reporting, police were called to the scene at about 8:15 a.m., and when officers arrived they found him dead from a gunshot wound to the head.
The violence erupted in a place woven into the routine of an ordinary weekday morning, and the shock spread quickly through Mount Airy as patrol cars, emergency crews, and school officials reacted in real time. Nearby schools, including Jones Intermediate, Mount Airy Middle School, Mount Airy High School, and other district facilities, were placed on lockdown or hold status while officers worked to secure the area and find the gunman.
In the days that followed, the public picture of Villalon Luna became fuller and more human through the words of his wife and family. He was known to loved ones as Alberto, and his wife described him as a caring, loving husband whose life centered not only on his family but also on the farm animals he adored. Reports described a home filled with goats, chickens, sheep, dogs, and the kind of daily responsibilities that gave shape to his life. Spanish-language coverage and family fundraising pages painted the same portrait of a man whose death was not just a headline, but a sudden tearing apart of a household that had expected a normal Wednesday and instead found itself planning a funeral.
As for the suspect, authorities identified Austin Hawks, 26, as the man accused in the killing. Multiple reports said Hawks fled after the shooting, but officers located and arrested him roughly an hour later, near the scene. He was charged with murder, held without bond, and taken to the Surry County Detention Center. Public reporting consistently points to that arrest as the major development in the case, and the available online sources located here do not clearly show a later public outcome such as a trial, conviction, or sentencing. What remains most clear in the coverage is how quickly the case moved from sudden street-corner violence to an arrest, even as the loss to Villalon Luna’s family settled in far more slowly and far more painfully.
