Photos from Orange County Sheriff's Office, store photo from Google street view.
By Elliott West, The Raleigh Telegram
CEDAR GROVE, NC – The Orange County Sheriff’s Department announced late last week that detectives have made two arrests in a murder and robbery case that left a former sheriff’s deputy and a store owner dead at a rural Orange County store earlier this month.
Police say they have charged Ladell Faucette (seen at top in photo), age 22, and Curtis White, Jr., age 18, each with two counts of first degree murder and one count of armed robbery. The men are still being held without bail in the case.
The arrests come after a shocking robbery and homicides that left the rural community in shock.
Two gunshot victims at the Week In Treasures store on Carr Store Road in Cedar Grove were found dead at the store last Wednesday, January 25th. The victims were identified as store owner Philip Johnson and retired Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Alexander “Skip” Wade, who frequently visited the store and played pool with Johnson. A cash register was missing and the motive was apparently robbery, according to authorities.
According to a report on NBC17 (click here), the two men possibly became suspects after a North Carolina State Highway Patrolman pulled the pair over for speeding on Carr Store Road around the time of the robbery.
In the NBC17 report, family members of the victims also stated that they saw the men there at the store directly after the robbery. A family member told the station that a police investigator allegedly told them that the men shot the two victims in the back of the head, stole the cash register and then came back to the store after taking the register to check the men’s pockets for more money when other people showed up. The men stayed at the store to try and avoid suspicion, the family member alleged.
Arrest warrants for the pair say that only $200 was taken from the Cedar Grove store. The warrants also say that charges are also pending against the men for another robbery in Mebane the day before the Cedar Grove incident where they allegedly stole $500 and had a small caliber handgun.
The murder is the second time a clerk has been killed at the store location in Cedar Grove and is the second murder in the small community in less than a month, although the crimes are not related.
The 2004 murder of William King, a store clerk at the same location, has never been solved.
In Cedar Grove earlier this year, Christopher Eugene Rone, age 41, was charged with first degree murder after he turned himself in after he allegedly killed his girlfriend on Friday, January 13th of this year. ::
