Shane Bocephus “Bo” Hinkle, a 23-year-old White/Caucasian male from Lewisburg, West Virginia, died on January 3, 2015, after suffering a gunshot wound inside a residence on Church Street. Hinkle had been born on July 10, 1991, in Ronceverte and was the son of Diane Simmons Hinkle and the late Robert Hinkle Jr. What was first presented to authorities as a self-inflicted shooting soon developed into a homicide investigation when police said the physical evidence and statements from people inside the residence did not fit the initial account.
Lewisburg police were called to 334 Church Street early that Saturday morning for a reported self-inflicted gunshot wound. Investigators found that Hinkle had been shot on the left side of his head, while people who knew him reportedly described him as right-handed. Police also encountered conflicting witness statements, adding to their doubts that the shooting had occurred as initially reported.
Residents of the house told investigators that Hinkle and his girlfriend, Brandy Marie Dawn Black, had been arguing at about 3 a.m. and alleged that both had been engaged in heavy drug use. Authorities described the apparent circumstances surrounding the shooting as domestic-related.
According to the criminal complaint described in local reporting, witnesses heard a loud noise at approximately 3:30 a.m. that investigators believed was the gunshot. Black reportedly did not begin calling or screaming for help until roughly 10 to 30 minutes later. Other residents then found Hinkle unresponsive and attempted CPR while someone contacted 911. Those circumstances, combined with the location of the wound, the physical evidence and inconsistencies in the accounts given to police, led investigators away from the original suggestion of suicide and toward the possibility that another person had fired the weapon.
The investigation was led by Lewisburg Police Sgt. J.A. Vance, with assistance from Sgt. D.B. Eggleston, Patrolman J.T. Williams II and members of the Greenbrier County Sheriff’s Department. Police arrested Black, identified in contemporary reporting as Hinkle’s girlfriend, and charged her with first-degree murder in connection with his death. She was taken to Southern Regional Jail in Beaver. Local reports differ concerning Black’s age at the time, so that detail is not included here, but they agree that she was a Lewisburg resident who was arrested on January 3 and faced a felony first-degree murder charge.
The prosecution did not immediately proceed to a murder trial. On January 15, less than two weeks after the shooting, the West Virginia Daily News reported that the murder charge against Black had been dismissed without prejudice. A dismissal without prejudice left open the legal possibility that prosecutors could bring the charge again if additional evidence or other circumstances justified doing so. The available reliable online reporting located for the case does not document the first-degree murder charge being refiled, nor does it show a subsequent trial or conviction of Black for Hinkle’s death. Consequently, although police arrested and formally accused Black, the publicly available record does not establish through a criminal conviction that she was responsible for the fatal shooting.
Hinkle’s death left behind a grieving family that included his mother, sister, nieces, grandmother, step-grandfather and several uncles. A memorial service was arranged at Morgan Funeral Home in Lewisburg on January 16, 2015. His death had begun with an emergency call describing a self-inflicted wound, but within days investigators had treated the circumstances as a suspected domestic homicide and made a murder arrest. The later dismissal of that charge, with no documented trial or conviction emerging in the online record, left the criminal case without the definitive courtroom resolution that the initial arrest appeared likely to bring.
