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Man charged with murder in killing of N.C. deputy

Deputy Ned Byrd, who had responded to an earlier domestic incident, was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds outside his unmarked SUV

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Photo/Wake County Sheriff’s Office

By Virginia Bridges
The Charlotte Observer

WAKE COUNTY, N.C. — A man charged with murder in the killing of Wake County Deputy Ned Byrd will make his first court appearance in the case Monday afternoon.

Arturo Marin-Sotelo, 29, of Apex is charged with murder in the death of Byrd, according to an arrest warrant issued Wednesday.

Byrd was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds outside his unmarked Sheriff’s Office SUV around 1 a.m. Friday, Aug. 12, near a gas station on Auburn Knightdale and Battle Bridge roads in southeastern Wake County.

Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Eric Curry said Byrd had responded to a domestic incident in that area around 11 p.m. Thursday. After calls, deputies typically pull off to the side in a safe location and enter their notes from the incident, which Byrd did, Curry said.

At some point dispatch tried to check in, and Byrd, a K-9 officer and former detention officer who had worked for the Sheriff’s Office for 13 years, didn’t respond, Curry said.

After a couple of attempts, another deputy was sent to the location where the vehicle was tracked and found Byrd’s body around 1 a.m., Curry said, Byrd’s canine partner, Sasha, was still in the SUV.

On Monday, the Wake County Sheriff’s Office released images of a light-colored vehicle caught by the deputy’s dash camera recorder.

On Wednesday law enforcement in Winston-Salem found a red truck believed to be linked to the shooting and brought it back to Wake County on a flatbed trailer, someone with knowledge of the investigation said.

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Two men taken into custody

On Tuesday, two men were taken into federal custody after the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation asked the Burke County’s Sheriff’s Office to help stop two men who were traveling westbound on Interstate-40 in a Black Chevrolet Tahoe and a gold Cadillac Escalade.

“SBI is requesting assistance in stopping the suspect, actually two suspect vehicles from the Wake Deputy,” Burke officials said, according to a Broadcastify recording of the interaction first reported by WRAL.

The dispatcher appears to tell a deputy trailing the vehicles that there is one person in each vehicle.

“And they are both believed to be suspects,” he said.

It was unclear Thursday morning if Arturo Marin-Sotelo was one of the two men taken into custody in Burke County.

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