Transcription
The story of Rick Chow and Cyrus Carmarmac Belton is an American horror story. Black kid goes into a store, steals nothing, ends up dead.
I am tired. I don't want this to happen to any other child. No black or brown child. You have to go through this. No parent should have to go through this. This has to stop today. And until you are in my shoes and YOU HAVE TO BURY A CHILD, I DON'T WANT TO HEAR NOTHING from you.
I am very disappointed in our justice system.
Yeah, we all are.
I don't understand.
I mean, you you get shot in the back, not guilty. How? How? How you? How a 14-year-old boy walks into a gas station, picks up four bottles of water, changes his mind, puts them all back, and 60 seconds later, he's dead with a bullet in his back. That's what happened to Cyrus Carmarmac Belton on the night of May 28th, 2023 outside a shell station on Parklane Road in Columbia, South Carolina. And the man who pulled the trigger, the store owner himself, 61-year-old Rick Chow. After an argument, Cyrus walked out. Instead of letting it go, Chow's adult son, Andy, started chasing the teenager down the street. Rick Chow followed right behind him, armed with a loaded .045 caliber Glock. He was shot in the back.
A forensic pathologist testified the bullet tore through Cyrus's lower back and pierced his heart. And then at trial, the shooter is found.
We, the jury, unanimously find the defendant not guilty.
This should remind everyone of who we really are in this country. In the entire pantheon of guilty until proven innocent stories of shopping while black, stories of black boys being treated like men and being murdered for it, stories. All of the BLM stories, even in all of those lineages, this is an unforgettable story. A 14-year-old black boy, Cyrus Carmarmac Belton, a middle schooler with two parents and a dream of being a tattoo artist. It's a shame that I have to quantify that he wasn't a thug, but in America, in a murder trial, when it's a black victim, the victim is on trial, too. He wasn't a thug. He was a child. He was not there to steal. But in that store, he was just a potential thief.
The wife of the store's owner, Alice Chow, is walking the floor of the store. When Cyrus arrives, she orders him to take off his backpack and put it aside. She watches him as he walks around the store. This is the moment Cyrus walking to the cooler, opening the door, taking out four bottles of water, then putting every single one back one by one, goes to walk out of the store, but the woman who's been watching him closely accuses him of stealing. They made him turn out his pockets, and he did. I don't. He walked out of the store peacefully. She admitted Cyrus was walking casually when he left the store. He had stolen nothing. All they had seen him touch was water. But to be young and black in a store is to be guilty until proven innocent.
The store owner's wife said something in Cantonese. And within seconds, surveillance cameras captured all three of them. Alice Chow, Andy Chow, and Rick Chow running after him. Part of being black is you have to find grace and remain restrained in moments when people are challenging your character and threatening your body. Because once someone starts thinking that your black ass might be a criminal, if you get angry, you could get killed. If you lose your cool, you could lose your life. I have been accused of stealing something small in a store a few times. I had to remain calm and respectful as the verbal charge hung in the air. If I turned indignant and angry, which I felt, then I would look defensive and guilty. Only by staying calm could I convince people that the charge was absurd on its face. But I'm staying calm in spite of being offended. I would never steal from a store, and the only reason why you think I might. So, when they challenged 14-year-old Cyrus with stealing, he may have been taken aback. He knows he's stolen nothing, but shortly after walking out of the store, Rick Chow starts chasing him. A witness said it looked like he was running for his life. He was holding his pants up with one hand, pumping his arm with the other, running so fast his shoe flew off. Rick Chow was behind Andy. Carson told the jury Cyrus had nothing in his hands when he ran past her. Nothing. She watched him cross the street, trip over a curb, get back up, trip again. His backpack fell off the second time he went. He crawled toward the spot where he died. Outside of Chia's store, he chased the boy. Cyrus ran out of his shoe. He lost his shoe as he was running. Two cell phones fell as he ran. One was his, one was his mom's. I get the feeling from these details of someone running for their life, running as fast as they possibly can. And important things are falling off of their body and they are not stopping to pick them up because they are in fear. The boy who had one shoe tripped and fell, struggled to get up, was not posing a threat, but Chia's bullet entered the teenager's body through his back. That's an insane sentence. The kid was running away from Chia and Chow shot him in the back.
Big Chow has shot people before. In 2015, a woman grabbed two cases of Bud Light and a package of peanuts and left without paying. He struggled with her outside the store. She got in her car and he pulled out a Glock. He fired at the passenger side window six times. He fired six shots at a moving car over beer and peanuts. Stealing is wrong, but six shots. He was willing to kill or maim over a few dollars. In 2018, Chia confronted someone who had stolen a can of oven cleaner. Chow fired at him twice and hit him in the leg. He was never charged. Chia was willing to be violent at a store where there were hundreds of calls to police all the time over assaults, larceny, shoplifting, motor vehicle theft, vandalism, robbery, burglary. A store like his that's open 24 hours carrying cash located in a working-class community, that is going to generate a lot of calls to police. But the system repeatedly let Chia think it was okay to respond to his problems with extreme violence. He was not charged in either of those shootings. There's no proportionality in firing six times at someone over beer. No, he shouldn't have to let people rob him out of a store. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about an overzealous store owner who doesn't trust his customers and feels justified to shoot them. The sheriff's office reached out to him after the second shooting and had him come into their office and spoke to him about the legal limits of using force at his store. So, the system did in its own way let him know he was pushing the limits. He was warned.
In 1991, 15-year-old Latasha Harlins walked into Empire Liquor, owned by a Korean family in South Central LA. Minutes later, Latasha was dead. Ice Cube would talk about her in a song.
Latasha Harlins was only 15 years old when she walked into a Los Angeles store. She never made it home that day. It was March 16th, 1991 when Latasha walked into the Empire Liquor Market in Delhi in South Central Los Angeles. She went in for a bottle of orange juice. She put the bottle in her backpack and approached the counter with $2 in her hand. The price was $1.79. The store owner accused her of stealing despite the money being visible. She grabbed Latasha's bag. The two had a violent scuffle. Latasha threw the juice bottle back onto the counter and turned to leave. The store owner pulled out a gun. She shot 15-year-old Latasha Harlins in the back of the head. All of that was captured on security camera. A jury found the store owner guilty of voluntary manslaughter, but the judge sentenced her to time served. She did not spend a single day in prison after her conviction.
Both victims were black teenagers. Both were in convenience stores owned by Asian immigrants. Both were accused of stealing something worth almost nothing. Neither were stealing. Both were shot from behind while trying to leave. Both shooters claimed they feared for their lives. Both of them walked free. In both cases, the system looked at the footage and said, "This black child's life is not worth accountability." These are the moments that phrases like Black Lives Matter were built for because we have to continually remind America that black lives do matter, but we are guilty until proven innocent and still may not be innocent.
Anyway, I do not point out that Chia is an immigrant to demonize him. MAGA has demonized immigration, but I do not. My wife is an immigrant. I'm old enough to remember when immigrants and immigration were considered reasons to be proud of America. The vibe was look, people from all over the world want to live in America. That's proof that America is the best country in the world. So, I don't refer to him as an immigrant because that means we should hate him. It means that he's part of the history of Asians coming to this country and working as small business owners in black communities. There are more Chinese restaurants in black neighborhoods than almost anywhere else in America. So much so that Chinese food becomes an integral part of the black experience. Chinese food, Korean beauty supply stores, and liquor stores are all pervasive in every single black neighborhood across America. Asian immigrants have been opening businesses in black communities since Chinese-owned grocery stores were selling to newly emancipated black Americans in the South during Reconstruction. That came up in Sinners where the black citizens and the Asian shopkeepers worked well together. For much of the last century, blacks were either legally or de facto barred from opening businesses in our own communities. Asian small business people often stepped in to fill the void. There are a lot of Asian immigrant-owned stores in black communities because in 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. Basically, "You are not welcome here," signed into law. Nearly every Chinese immigrant was banned from entering the United States. The only exceptions were diplomats, students, and merchants. So, Chinese immigrants got creative. If owning a business is the ticket in, then everybody's opening a business.
Now, let's fast forward a few decades. Redlining is in full effect. The federal government is literally drawing maps of black neighborhoods and making them too risky for investment. White businesses are leaving. Banks aren't lending. And Chinese restaurant owners who are also being locked out of white neighborhoods are moving into the spaces black families are being contained in. Asian-Americans were redlined from opening businesses in white neighborhoods because white people didn't want Asian-Americans operating in their neighborhoods and didn't want Asian-Americans profiting off of white people. Asian-Americans were being given loans to open businesses in black communities even though black people were not able to receive loans to open businesses in their own communities.
In so many cases, the dynamic of Asian stores in black communities has worked out just fine. In my neighborhood in Brooklyn, I have known many lovely Asian grocers. But sometimes the dynamic of Asian grocery store owner and black working-class community has become fraught. Some Asian immigrant grocers are extremely distrustful of their black customers and even afraid of them, viewing them as potential criminals more than customers. And that has led to extreme resentment from those black customers. People may say, "Well, just shop elsewhere." But in some working-class black neighborhoods, there are very few options. You can't just shop elsewhere. And the store owners can't just leave. They own the little store, but they're far from rich. They're just getting by. It costs a lot to sell a store and move to another location. And where are you going to go? You only have enough to afford to rent a store in a black neighborhood. So, y'all are stuck with each other. Fearful Asian immigrant grocer and resentful black consumer. Again, I'm not saying that's always the dynamic, but sometimes that combination has been combustible.
Before the Rick Chow murder trial, the judge denied Chia immunity under South Carolina's Stand Your Ground law. Stand Your Ground laws give people a lot of latitude when it comes to shooting to protect their home or their business. Sometimes it seems like a free pass to shoot negroes. When they knocked down Chow's possible Stand Your Ground defense, I thought he was cooked. But never underestimate America's ability to show us how little black bodies matter. By this point, you know he's going to be found not guilty. But how did that happen? What happened in that trial to justify letting this man walk free after chasing a black boy for 130 yards and shooting him in the back? Chow has been locked up since 2023 awaiting this verdict because the judge said he was a danger to society. The prosecution focused on the security footage. Andy admitted Cyrus was walking casually when he left the store.
But before the trial, the judge agreed to suppress evidence that Chow had shot customers in the past. That makes a huge difference. Andy testified that Cyrus pointed the firearm directly at him. No witness and no camera backs that up.
He crosses the street and I go to cross the street and then I see he trips and um falls flat um on the grass. And so I was running full speed. So I end up catching up to him. And when I catch up to him I see something is in his hand. I'm not sure what it is yet. Um, but as he starts to get up, I see that it's a gun and he start and he points it at me. So, I immediately put my hands up. I start to back away from him um quickly and then I yell, "He has a gun." And I turn to my dad who is coming up behind us and I yell at him again. He has a gun. And um I'm still backing up and I watch my dad and I hear him I watch him yell, "Drop it. Drop it." And he yells, "No." And then pulls his gun and fires one shot. After the shot, I turn and I look at him.
Mr. Chow's position is that he saw the gun pointed at his son and he made the split-second decision to defend his son, to prevent his son from being shot and killed. When a person comes to us and says, "Look, a gun was pointed at my son. I thought he was going to die, so I fired and shot." That was the legal defense. There was nothing creative. There was nothing tricky. There was nothing fancy. That was the legal defense. Nothing was hidden. When people say there was all this great stuff, that was the legal defense. Um, this was presented to a jury of 12 individuals, seven of which were minorities, who heard that legal defense and said, "Yeah, that makes sense."
Did the defense establish that Rick Chow was defending his son?
In order to assert self-defense, bro, there's five factors that go into it. Innocence, imminence, proportionality, reasonableness, and avoidance. You need to at least have a couple of those to even assert self-defense. Were Mr. Chow and his son innocent? No. They falsely accused a kid of stealing a bottle of water and then chased him out of a store for 130 yards. Escalation by their own actions based on a falsity. So they're not innocent. Imminence. Was the conflict imminent? No. Because the kid should have just been able to walk out of the store and he shouldn't have been chased because he didn't take anything. Is it proportional to chase somebody outside of a [ __ ] store over a bottle of [ __ ] water?
The defense did successfully reframe the case as not about a dispute over a bottle, but through the events that happened after the teenager left the store. That took the jury out of the mindset of "Did Cyrus steal something?" to "Was Rick Chow's son Andy in danger?" The judge allowed the defense to introduce a social media photo of Cyrus taken the night before the shooting where he was posing with the gun.
The defense introduced a social media photo of Cyrus holding that same gun.
Wait a minute. The fact that Rick Chow had shot other customers was barred, but a photo of Cyrus holding a gun was allowed because the victim is also on trial. In America, when the murder victim is black, you're far less likely to be convicted than when the victim is white. Because America doesn't really care about black bodies.
Chia was found not guilty. In the days since, there have been lots of protests. Protesters outraged about the Rick Chow murder trial, not guilty verdict. A memorial for Carmarmac placed where he was shot 130 yards from the gas station, now surrounded by flowers and water bottles. Instead of a sign, Michelle Fletcher was holding a bottle of water up in the air.
This is the protest. This is an ongoing story because you know in America this will happen again. Thank you for watching. Please like, subscribe, and comment all the things. I will be back.