Patricia King, the mother of 30-year-old Elijah Edward Timmons III, who was murdered at Orchard Bar & Grill in Hendersonville, North Carolina, in the early morning hours of November 24, tells The North Carolina Beat that her son’s murder was not self-defense, according to a video investigators showed her.
On Thanksgiving Day, the day before her son’s murder, Patricia King said that she had a Thanksgiving dinner at her home in Buncombe County. After the family finished dinner, she said she packed some banana pudding that she had made and drove 30 minutes to Henderson County to share it with family and friends.
After arriving at Elijah Timmons III’s paternal great-grandmother’s house, King said that everyone was having a good time, drinking, and enjoying the Thanksgiving holiday. While there, she said she had words with Elijah’s dad and was ready to leave. Before leaving, she said Elijah asked her if she wanted to go out, and she told him, “no.”
“I told him I didn’t want to go out because me and his sister was going out in Buncombe County,” King said she told her son.
‘Friday, November 24, 2023’
Early on Friday morning, November 24, around 12:00 a.m., King said she had returned to Buncombe County from Henderson County. She said she arrived home and changed into her bar attire, but as she approached the bar, she drove past because it seemed deserted. King said she drove back home and later received a phone call from Elijah.
She said that Elijah had called and asked her not to forget to put his computer away. She said she asked him where he was at, and he said they were out at a bar with his girlfriend, his cousin, and her boyfriend. King said they joked and laughed for a few minutes before hanging up.
“I told him I loved him and to call me when he got back home. He said he loved me and he would. as a family that’s what we did,” King said. “We make sure each other is safe and good and out of harms way.”
Patricia King told The North Carolina Beat that she did not know that the phone call would be her last with her son.
Elijah Edward Timmons III girlfriend and his sister called Patricia King about a shooting at Orchard Bar & Grill
After hanging up with Elijah, King said she sat on the edge of her bed for a few minutes before eventually lying down and dozing off. When she woke up again around 2:30 a.m., she was greeted by a phone call from Elijah’s girlfriend but wasn’t able to pick it up on its last ring. The next phone call she received was from her daughter immediately as the girlfriend’s call was missed.
She said she answered her daughter’s phone call and her daughter was ‘screaming’. King said her daughter was urging her to “hurry up and get some clothes on,” which confused her because at first her daughter wasn’t explaining what was going on. She said her son’s girlfriend called back while she was in the middle of talking to her daughter, and she answered.
“Trish, they shot him in the head… they shot ‘DUDE’ in the head,” the girlfriend said to kING. “I asked her, ‘Who?’“Who?” “And she said she didn’t know… then she said, ‘He’s got a pulse, just hurry and come.'”
‘Orchard Bar & Grill in Hendersonville, North Carolina a crime scene’
King said she drove nearly 120 mph in the median lane to reach Orchard Bar & Grill at 110 Henderson Crossing Plaza, Hendersonville, NC. Upon arriving at the bar, King stated that the police had surrounded the plaza and blocked one driveway. She said she pulled into another driveway and saw her son lying on the ground in a pool of blood.
“I pulled my car up as close as I could TO get to my son and ran towards him,” King said. “All I can think about is that I am going to get to hold my son…and just hold him.”
Hendersonville Police Department and Henderson County Sheriff’s Office assaulted Patricia King and put her in handcuffs feets away from her deceased son
As King ran towards her son, who was lying dead on the ground and covered in a bloody sheet, she expressed that officers from the Hendersonville Police Department and deputies from the Henderson County Sheriff’s Office had “knocked the wind” out of her. She said the officers and deputies twisted her hands behind her back and also put their knees on her back, leaving bruises.
Eyewitnesses said King was dragged across concrete by law enfrocement on scene.
“I told them that I couldn’t breathe, and they didn’t care at first until another officer heard me losing my voice. i FORCED MYSELF TO lift my head up AND AIR WAS ABLE TO GET IN MY AIRWAYS,” King said. i WAS ABLE TO MUSTER UP ENOUGH breathe TO SAY I CAN’T BREATHE FOR A SECOND TIME again and A officer said ‘oh f-ck, she can’t breathe, TURN HER OVER…TURN HER OVER!” “tHAT’S WHEN ABOUT FOUR OFFICERS SNATCHED ME UP BY MY ARM WHILE i was in HANDCUFFS AND SLAMMED ME ON MY A**”
The officers and deputies at the scene didn’t even have the decency to allow King to pull her pants up, let alone show any respect to the grieving mother. In a video obtained by The North Carolina Beat, King could be seen sitting on the ground with her pants halfway down, a few feet away from her son who had just been shot dead outside of Orchard Bar & Grill.
“This how y’all do the mother?” the man filming said, while King’s daughter who had arrived on the scene could be heard yelling, ‘Leave her alone! She has every right to see her child!'”
In the video, a bystander also asked the law enforcement officers surrounding Elijah and his mother, King, “Where is the ambulance?” None of the officers responded to it.
“Is this how y’all treat the mother of the victim?”, the man filming continued.
WATCH VIDEO BELOW:
Patrica King said detectives showed her a video of Terrence Trevonne Burton of Asheville shooting her son
King told The North Carolina Beat that a week after her son’s murder, the lead investigator on the case, Lt. Alan Bonanno, called her to the station to show her the footage of the shooting. She said Lt. Bonanno showed her “bits and pieces” of the video by rewinding and fast-forwarding. Before showing her the videos, King said the investigator told her that her son and the alleged shooter had greeted each other with a handshake, and then Burton hugged Elijah before entering the bar.
According to King, the video she was showed by Lt. Bonanno, she said her son could be seen walking backwards out the front door of the bar into the parking lot followed by Terrance and his associates. She said the video group of people the Hillcrest projects in Buncombe County.
“I see my son walking backwards outside of the bar being followed by terrence and a group of people from hillcrest,” King said.
While Lt. Bonanno reportedly fast-forwarded and rewinded different parts of the video, King said he showed her another part where Elijah is surrounded by the same group of people, when Burton suddenly appears in the footage and walk towards the group. He allegedly aims for Elijah’s head and shoots him. According to King, she said she saw Burton, for a mili-second standing – watching her son collapse to the ground. King said the video then show Burton put his gun in his pocket, and flee the scene in a car.
“My son didn’t even know Terrence had a gun,” King said. “My son is arguing with these other fools from Hillcrest and then Terrence walks up and aim at my son head and shoot him.” “How is this self-defense? Release the tape!”
“After he watched my son collapse, he put the gun in his pocket, walked off, got inside of a car and drove off,” King said, as shown in the video.
At the time of the shooting, the suspect was still at large, according to WLOS. According to King, she said the investigators told her that her son had a gun and that he pointed it at Terrence, but the police never showed her a video of her son pulling or pointing a gun.
“They told me that my son had a gun and he pointed it but they never showed me that on the video of the shooting, King said. “All my son is doing is standing there when Terrence walked up and shot him in the head.”
No charges filed in the murder of Elijah Edward Timmons III after Henderson County District Attorney Andrew Murray ruled the case as “self-defense”
On December 12, King told The North Carolina Beat that Henderson County District Attorney Andrew Murray called her and family into his office and informed them that he would not be filing criminal charges because the case was deemed to be an act of self-defense.
King said he told them that her son had pointed a gun at the alleged shooter before he was killed, but according to King, the video does not show that and Lt. Bonanno never showed her a video that did.
“This was not self-defense,” King said. “How is it self-defense when you just walk up and shoot my son?”
According to King, she said the district attorney received over 50 opinions on the shooting and concluded that no charges would be filed.
King stated that the investigation into her son’s death was sloppy from the start, and she claimed that law enforcement officers did not question anyone at the scene about the shooting. She said on the day Lt. Bonanno called them into his office to see the shooting video, he didn’t know who the shooter or anyone in the group was until they told him.
The Hendersonville Police Department has chosen to release only limited information about the shooting and continues to ignore questions about why the alleged shooter, identified as Terrence Burton, fled the scene if the shooting was in self-defense.
Patricia King told The North Carolina Beat that eyewitnesses, including Elijah’s girlfriend, said Elijah didn’t have a gun, and the police did not show her a video of Elijah with a gun or pointing it. The mother is puzzled as to why the district attorney is only reviewing the video of her son’s murder without pressing charges. She suspects it may be because her son, Quwiivonte, was acquitted of the 2014 murder of 31-year-old Patrick Saunders, a white man, when he was 17 years old.
Patricia King suspects murder charges are not being brought in her son Elijah Edward Timmons III case because her youngest child Quwiivonte Timmons won a murder case in the death of a 31-year-old Patrick Saunders, a white man.
In April 2017, King lost her 21-year-old son, Quwiivonte Timmons, in a car wreck. However, the Asheville Police Department refused to investigate the case, despite having information that he was forced off the road, according to King.
“After Quiivonte won his case in 2014 and later died in 2017, the police refused to investigate his death,” King said.“They had information that my son was forced off the road, but they didn’t investigate who did it or how it happened.”
Elijah Timmons III leaves behind four sons. But for Patricia King, this is the second son she has lost.
“My son loved his boys and spent so much time with them, King said. “He always took them fishing and this Christmas he had planned to buy them pocket rocket motorcycles.”
“Anyone who knew my son knew he was a respectable man and he will be missed, King said. “I want justice him.”
The North Carolina Beat has reached out to the Henderson County District Attorney’s Office for a statement but did not receive a response before publishing this story.
