'Like a piece of garbage': Attorneys close trial in K&W murder

As Amanda Fisher was dying, Nicolas McIver and Terrell Freeman threw her body out of a car in a parking lot “like a piece of garbage,” a solicitor told a Horry County Jury on Friday.

Senior Assistant Solicitor George Debusk made the comment during his closing statement in a trial about a July 2016 murder at a North Myrtle Beach K&W Cafeteria.

But, defense attorneys told the jury the state didn’t prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt to show that McIver and Freeman were guilty of murder.

The duo’s fate is now in the hands of the jury which deliberated for about two hours before breaking for the night. They will resume their deliberations Friday morning.

McIver and Freeman are accused of killing Fisher in a K&W parking lot. Prosecutors say the two met Fisher in Myrtle Beach. After a night of partying, the group went to North Carolina before returning to North Myrtle Beach.

Fisher was shot in a car and Freeman and McIver left her body in the lot. McIver then drove Fisher’s car to the Charlotte area where he burned it. Freeman drove McIver’s truck back to the same region.

They were charged with murder, kidnapping, possession of a weapon during a violent crime and grand larceny.

Debusk told the jury there was no doubt that one of the two accused shot Fisher.

“No matter who pulled the trigger both are guilty,” he said.

Freeman and McIver both took Fisher, as she died, out of the car and threw her on the pavement, Debusk said. They then gathered her items and fled to the Charlotte area.

The state used the theory that if one person committed the crime then everybody is guilty, Debusk said. An example would be the getaway driver in a bank robbery facing the same charges as the person who passes the note to a teller.

Separate defense attorneys represent McIver and Freeman and each pointed the finger at the co-defendant as the shooter.

“There is absolutely, positively no evidence in the record direct or circumstantial…there is no evidence in the record my client pulled out a gun put it against her head and pulled the trigger,” Freeman’s attorney Martin Spratlin said.

Spratlin said he don’t know why his client removed the body, but there was no evidence that Freeman knew McIver was going to pull out a gun.

Some of the solicitor's comments were designed to pull at heartstrings, Spratlin said. He implored the jury to look at the evidence and leave emotion out of their deliberations.

“You can be weighed by your heart, you have to think with your brain,” he said.

McIver’s attorney Scott Bellamy said there was no plan to kill Fisher. He added the evidence showed the two removed the body in broad daylight and McIver took her car and stopped at stores where he’d be on surveillance cameras.

“By circumstances, it tells us there was no plan,” Bellamy said.

Bellamy admitted McIver made a bad decision to leave with Fisher’s car and credit cards. Though, he added, McIver was not guilty of murder and there was no evidence to show who fired the fatal shot.

This story was originally published April 26, 2018 at 8:46 PM with the headline "'Like a piece of garbage': Attorneys close trial in K&W murder."