North Carolina's highest court has upheld the conviction of a Raleigh man found guilty of murder in a 2019 drive-by shooting that killed a 24-year-old mother and left others wounded on Bragg Street. Kedrick Daquane Thomas was convicted of second-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury, and the North Carolina Supreme Court has now affirmed that outcome.
According to CBS17.com, the shooting happened in downtown Raleigh in 2019 when a passenger inside a vehicle opened fire in front of a convenience store in the 500 block of Bragg Street, according to officials. Kimberly Holder, 24, was killed in the gunfire, and officials say three others were seriously injured. Thomas was identified as the suspect and was taken into custody about a week after the shooting, according to officials.
The North Carolina Attorney General's Office said the Supreme Court upheld Thomas's convictions, a determination that came per the attorney general's office on August 14, 2026. The underlying appellate opinion, State v. Thomas, centered on whether replacing a juror after deliberations had begun violated Thomas's constitutional right to a 12-person jury, and whether he waived a Fourth Amendment challenge by disclaiming an objection to the admission of certain evidence.
Conflicting Accounts of Who Was Injured
Accounts of the shooting's toll on survivors differ depending on the outlet. WRAL reported that Kimberly Holder, 24, was found dead on Nov. 8 in the 500 block of Bragg Street, and that two men and a woman were also injured in the shooting, with all three expected to recover. ABC11, meanwhile, reported that Holder was shot and killed Nov. 8 on Bragg Street near Garner Road, and that two men were also shot during the same crime and suffered non-life-threatening injuries. The two accounts differ on whether two or three other people were wounded.
Thomas, 27 at the time of his arrest, was charged with murder and three counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury, and he was held without bond in the Wake County jail, per WRAL's reporting. Arrest warrants showed Thomas was on probation at the time of the shooting, the station reported.
Two Others Extradited From Texas
Two other people were charged in connection with the case. Stephon Riddick-McQueen and Ivette Uriostegui-Gonza were extradited to North Carolina from Texas on Dec. 6, according to the same WRAL report.
North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson defended the convictions in announcing the ruling, saying his office will continue taking court fights to ensure justice is upheld and protect North Carolinians from crime. The Thomas case was one of several convictions his office highlighted as upheld by the state's courts in recent appellate activity, alongside an unrelated Wake County case involving Kevin Leigh Wingate, in which the Supreme Court reversed a Court of Appeals decision that had vacated Wingate's sentence and ordered a new trial. Wingate had been convicted in 2017 in Wake County Superior Court of four counts of indecent liberties with a child and one count of statutory sex offense with a child by an adult, and had received a sentence of 30 years and four months to 44 years and eight months.
