For more than a week in 2009, Gastonia resident Mark Stamey says he shared motel rooms and a haze of drug use with a man he barely knew. That man, he later learned, was Patrick Burris, the suspect police would eventually link to a string of shootings that left five people dead in Cherokee County, South Carolina.
Stamey says Burris stayed with him and his sister while the group used drugs, crashing at a Best Western and other spots. He recalls being the one who opened the door to officers at that Best Western room where Burris was ultimately found, just before a confrontation with police that ended with Burris dead. Investigators later said ballistics tied the gun used in that shootout to several of the Gaffney-area killings.
In an interview with WSOC, Stamey said he met Burris through a drug dealer and never really knew where the man went when he would disappear for hours or even days at a time. Investigators now believe those gaps may have been trips back and forth to Cherokee County in the middle of the killing spree.
Stamey told the station that Burris once warned him, "One day you are going to have a story to tell," a line that did not land until after Burris had been named as the suspected shooter. "I never dreamed I would be around anyone like that," Stamey said. He added that he has since gotten clean, started his own business and credits his faith with keeping him alive long enough to change his life.
2009 Killings In Cherokee County
The violence that would later be tied to Burris unfolded over six days in late June and early July 2009. It began on June 27, when a 63-year-old peach farmer was shot. Four days later, an 83-year-old woman and her daughter were found bound and shot. Soon after, a father and his teenage daughter were shot at their family appliance store; the daughter later died from her injuries.
Ballistics tests later matched bullets from those crime scenes to the gun recovered after the Gastonia police encounter, according to The Irish Times.
How The 2009 Standoff Unfolded
Authorities say the final confrontation with Burris happened when officers responded to a burglary call at a home in the Gastonia area and found him there. During that encounter, an officer was shot in the leg before police fired back and killed Burris, as reported by The Irish Times. The same account noted that items recovered from the scene, along with ballistics tests, were later linked to the Cherokee County killings.
Investigators said Burris had been paroled only months earlier after serving nearly eight years. His lengthy criminal record, and the fact that he was back on the streets, quickly became a flashpoint for officials once he was named as the suspect. CBS News reported on law-enforcement briefings that detailed Burris' history and the multiagency investigation that followed the shootings.
Looking back, Stamey told WSOC that he considers his survival a "testimony" and hopes that his story will reach others who are caught in addiction. Turning his life around after 2009, he said, is part of a longer journey away from drugs, and he wants people to know that if he could walk away from that world, they might be able to as well.
