By Nathan Hardin
nhardin@salisburypost.com
ROCKWELL — Investigators searched a Blackbeard Lane home last night after authorities said a Rockwell man chased down a 24-year-old and shot at his car.
Derryck Kessler told deputies Charles “Buzzy” Walton shot at him as he neared Walton’s house Thursday afternoon.
No one was injured in the shooting.
Rockwell Police and the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office spoke to witnesses on the scene, along with those involved.
Investigators didn’t find a firearm at the home, but they found a shed full of ammunition and enough evidence to charge Walton.
Kessler and his friend Joshua Burleyson, 26, were trying to see Kessler’s mother, Shannon Earnhardt, who lives with Walton, when the shooting started.
The 43-year-old Walton had an altercation with Kessler earlier Wednesday in Salisbury, the report said.
After seeing Walton, Kessler said, he thought he could visit his mother quickly before Walton returned.
But Kessler never made it in the driveway.
Witnesses told deputies they saw Kessler drive slowly down Blackbeard Lane about 5 p.m. Walton then got out of a pickup and began screaming at the two.
Kessler put the car in reverse, but Walton fired at the car before the two were out on Emanuel Church Road.
The report says Walton then jumped in his white F-150 pickup, chased Kessler down Emanuel Church Road and shot out his right rear window with a rifle.
Investigators got consent from Walton and Earnhardt to search the home Wednesday night.
They didn’t find anything in the home or around the outside of the house.
But in a white wood-sided building behind the home, deputies found boxes of handgun, rifle and shotgun ammunition.
Investigators said some of the ammunition was packaged, the rest was loose rounds in plastic bags and boxes.
They also found more ammunition boxes in the floorboard of a black pickup parked in the driveway.
Walton, a convicted sex offender, was charged with two counts of felony assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, felony shooting into an occupied and moving vehicle, and felony possession of a firearm by a felon.
He was given a $65,000 bond.
The investigation is on-going, deputies said.
Contact reporter Nathan Hardin at 704-797-4246.
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