Wilkes County Man, 45, Charged After Shooting Leaves Neighbor Critical

A 45-year-old man is being held without bond in the Wilkes County Jail after deputies say he shot a 34-year-old man outside a residence in the rural Austin community late Saturday night, leaving the victim in critical condition. Joel Seth Spicer II now faces a charge of attempted first-degree murder in connection with the shooting of Garrett Dale Horne.

According to the Journal-Patriot, Wilkes deputies responded at about 8:30 p.m. Saturday to a report of a man shot outside a home at 223 Link Road. The road is a dead-end off Austin-Little Mountain Road in the unincorporated Austin community near Elkin, according to WACB 860AM. Spicer is listed with addresses in both Traphill and the Elk Inn in Elkin, per the same report.

Victim Transported for Trauma Care

Horne was treated at the scene before being transported to Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem for a gunshot wound, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation confirmed in an official release. That hospital, located roughly 50 miles southeast of eastern Wilkes County, serves as the region's primary Level I Trauma Center for Northwest North Carolina — a designation that explains why critically injured rural patients are routinely routed there for specialized care, according to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety's 2025 Violence Profile.

The SBI said its agents were requested by Wilkes deputies to assist at the scene, a partnership the agency frequently forms with the sheriff's office on major felony cases in the rural county. Just two months ago, the two agencies jointly investigated the killing of a rural mail carrier in nearby Roaring River, as Hoodline reported at the time. The investigation into Saturday's shooting remains ongoing, and the relationship between Spicer and Horne, along with a motive for the shooting, has not been disclosed.

Suspect Was Himself Stabbed in 2024

The sheriff's office arrested Spicer on Sunday, and he appeared for a first appearance hearing in Wilkes District Court, where a judge ordered him held without bond. Notably, Spicer was on the other side of a violent crime just over two years earlier: in April 2024, he was the victim in an attempted first-degree murder case after his then-girlfriend allegedly stabbed him in the chest at a residence in Traphill, according to WACB 860AM's earlier coverage. That case reportedly resulted in a $500,000 bond for the woman charged in his stabbing.

Under North Carolina General Statute § 14-2.5, attempting to commit a Class A felony such as first-degree murder is classified as a Class B2 felony, which carries a mandatory active prison sentence without eligibility for probation, according to the Patrick Roberts Law Blog. That severe classification helps explain why the district court declined to set bond for Spicer during his initial appearance; under North Carolina law, judges hold statutory authority to hold non-capital violent felony defendants without bond while public safety risk is evaluated, per the North Carolina General Assembly.

Rural Violence in Context

Firearms have played an outsized role in Wilkes County's most serious violent crimes. The North Carolina Department of Public Safety's 2025 Violence Profile found that 64 percent of homicides in the county between 2013 and 2022 involved guns, and emergency departments logged 18 visits for firearm injuries in 2024 alone. Even so, Wilkes County's overall violent crime rate of 240.5 per 100,000 residents sits roughly 37 percent below the national benchmark, according to 2026 data from CrimeByCounty, with property crime accounting for the vast majority of reported offenses in the county.

Statewide, violent crime has been trending downward. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation's annual summary shows the state's violent crime rate fell 4.3 percent in 2024 compared with the prior year, with homicides dropping 9.2 percent amid declines in murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. Whether Saturday's shooting fits any broader pattern remains unclear, but for now the case adds another chapter to Wilkes County's recent run of serious violent crime investigations requiring state assistance.