Gastonia man killed by bail bondsmen, police say

A man was shot and killed in Gastonia by at least one bail bondsman early Friday morning, according to Gastonia Police.

Dalton Lee Lewis, 24, was at a home on Diane 29 Theater Road near Bessemer City about 6:40 a.m. when he was shot, police spokesman Rick Goodale said.

Police are now investigating two vastly different accounts of what happened.

According to Brittany Green, Lewis' fiancée, she was in a car with Lewis and the two were about to leave for Bojangles when a group of bail bondsmen pulled up in two vehicles, approached and surrounded the car without identifying themselves.

"They didn't say 'bondsmen.' They didn't say, 'police! stop!' They didn't say nothing," Green said. "They just said, 'Get out of the car.'"

Green said that Lewis locked the car's doors and reached for his keys.

"And then they say, 'gun, gun, gun' and unloaded,'" Green said.

She said Lewis put up his hands and grabbed the headrest, but the bail bondsmen kept shooting. She said that Lewis was not armed.

Tim Moore, one of the bail bondsmen who was present, disagreed. He told reporters that Lewis had a gun, and that's why he was shot.

"He had a gun in my face," Moore said. "He jumped in the car and pointed a gun in my face. That's when they started firing on him," he said.

Moore said that Lewis had failed to appear in court, and that bondsmen were there to take him into custody.

Moore said he himself did not fire at Lewis.

"We don't ever want to shoot nobody at all. We don't ever want it to come to this," he said.

Goodale said that when police arrived at the home, bail bondsmen who were there told officers that they had found a revolver in the car Lewis was in. They had put it on the hood of the car.

Police were still investigating Friday afternoon to figure out which account of the shooting was true, but they said in a news release that "at least one bail bondsman" shot Lewis. Some of the five bondsmen who were present were from Faith Bail Bonds, Goodale said. Police were still working on Friday afternoon to confirm where the others were from. Nobody had been charged Friday afternoon.

Goodale said Lewis was shot eight times. His mother, Lynn Spargo, added that seven of those shots were in the chest.

Updates to this story will appear on GastonGazette.com through the weekend.

Reporter Kara Fohner can be reached at 704-869-1850 or at kfohner@gannett.com. Support local journalism by subscribing here.

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Gastonia man killed by bail bondsmen, police say