The NAACP is again calling on federal authorities to investigate the case of Henderson Atwater, a Wake County man who was convicted last year in a series of air gun shootings and is set to spend the rest of his life in prison.
“Justice must not only be pursued, it must be corrected,” Mark Vasconcelles, president of the Raleigh-Apex branch of the NAACP, said at a press conference last week. “The longer this injustice stands, the more we contribute to the erosion of public trust in our judicial system.”
Atwater, 49, was convicted last July of seven felony charges and several misdemeanors related to a string of drive-by BB and pellet gun shootings that took place in Holly Springs in 2020 and 2021. The shootings caused property damage and one serious injury but no fatalities.
The state’s case against Atwater was marked by limited physical evidence and instances where law enforcement, in the words of Assistant District Attorney Casey Young, “dropped the ball”—failing to document witness accounts, file police reports, or preserve evidence.
After Atwater’s first trial in August 2023 ended with a hung jury, prosecutors retried the case the next year and Atwater was found guilty. Superior Court Judge Keith Gregory sentenced him to 49-72 years in prison.
The Raleigh-Apex NAACP has been calling for federal investigation into the case for years. This time, it’s directing its plea specifically to the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section, which investigates alleged misconduct by government officials.
At last week’s press conference, standing outside the North Carolina State Legislative Building on a mild New Year’s Eve afternoon, Vasconcelles delivered a 25-minute speech that, while heartfelt, sometimes lacked context and contained several inaccurate claims.
For example, Vasconcelles mentioned that the sole eyewitness in the case “claimed Mr. Atwater shot at him while operating a chainsaw” without explaining the significance of this detail—the witness testified to hearing the “tch tch tch” sound of the projectile coming at him through leaves while operating loud power equipment.
Vasconcelles also claimed the prosecution relied solely on a blurry, second-hand video recording from a police officer’s iPhone to convict Atwater. While his description of this footage as inconclusive is accurate, his claim about it being the only video evidence is not. Municipal camera footage showing Atwater’s vehicle, identifiable by its license plate, was captured at the site of one shooting in June 2020, and the victim of that shooting testified that Atwater’s vehicle was the one that shot at her.
Vasconcelles declined to take questions at the press conference and did not respond to emailed questions from the INDY.
The case has received significant publicity. During Atwater’s first trial, celebrities including Amy Schumer and Kim Kardashian shared an infographic about his indictment on social media. WRAL has provided ongoing coverage, including publishing a recording of Tuesday’s full press conference. The News & Observer also published a recap of the press conference, marking the first time the paper has done any coverage of the case.
There are legitimate concerns about how Atwater’s prosecution was handled, including crucial evidence being lost and prosecutors lumping together numerous incidents despite only having evidence for a few.
But the tendency to oversimplify the case—seen in both Vasconcelles’s speech and the viral infographic shared by celebrities—mirrors an issue that emerged during the trials themselves. At both the initial trial and retrial, Atwater’s defense attorneys opted for brief, impassioned closing arguments that left key evidence unaddressed.
Atwater’s attorneys filed an appeal in August arguing the prosecution wrongly combined unrelated cases. The appeal is currently pending.
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