CHAPEL HILL, NC -- The man accused of shooting three students at a Chapel Hill condominium had 14 firearms in his home according to a warrant.
The firearms and a cache of ammunition were seized from Craig Hick's home in Chapel Hill according to WFMY News 2 sister station WRAL.
The search warrant states police searched Hicks' condo the night of the shooting. They found two fully loaded guns, a fully loaded AR-15 Bushmaster rifle, two shotguns, five rifles, two handguns and two pellet guns. They also found numerous magazines with varying amounts of ammunition, boxes of ammunition, shotgun shells, BBs, gun scopes and other gun-related items, the warrant states.
According the warrant, police also took, two desktop computers, three cellphones and a digital camera.
It also states, a woman flagged down police and told them to go to Barakat's and Yusor Abu-Salha's condo. She told them her friend was bleeding. When officers arrived, they found Barakat dead in the front doorway bleeding from the head; one of the sisters was found in the kitchen, and the other was in the doorway to the kitchen.
WFMY News 2 also discovered Hicks was banned from calling tow companies. Hicks had neighbors' cars removed so often that he was eventually banned from using the towing company, according to a driver who often tows vehicles from the complex.
"It was often more than the average person," Christopher Lafreniere, with Barnes Towing, said Thursday. "It actually got to the point that he was not allowed to call a car in. If he called, we wouldn't go out."
Neighbors have said Craig Stephen Hicks, charged with three counts of first-degree murder, always appeared to be combative and angry about the parking situation at Finley Forest, where residents are allotted one reserved spot.
Although they haven't ruled out other possible motives, police have said that they believe an ongoing parking dispute led the 46-year-old paralegal student to shoot his neighbors – Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19 – early Tuesday evening.
Lafreniere, the driver who often towed cars from the complex, said Hicks called so much that it became a problem for the tow company.
"He didn't like people parking in his space, and he was really, really adamant," Lafreniere said. "I didn't understand why."
Lafreniere said Hicks was also involved in a towing incident that police responded to in December 2013.
In that case, Lafreniere and a driver were in a dispute, and Hicks, who had been watching from his window, came out with a handgun and said he had called police.
"He was always nice to all of us. Friendly," Lafreniere said. "He was very adamant about towing, though, and parking."
It wasn't the only problem, according to neighbors.
Imad Ahmad, who lived in the condo where his friends were killed until Barakat married, said Hicks complained about once a month that the two men were parking in a visitor's space and their assigned spot.
"He would come over to the door, knock on the door and then have a gun on his hip saying, 'You guys need to not park here,'" said Ahmad, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "He did it again after they got married."
Ahmad and his neighbors complained to the property managers, who had no comment Thursday.
"They told us to call the police if the guy came and harassed us again," Ahmad said.
"Anytime that I saw him or saw interaction with him or friends or anyone in the parking lot or myself, he was angry," Samantha Maness said. "He was very angry anytime I saw him."
"This man was frustrated day in and day out about not being able to park where he wanted to," the suspect's wife's attorney, Robert Maitland, said.
Police haven't said how Hicks allegedly got in the condominium. There were no visible signs of damage to the door Wednesday.
Hicks' ex-wife, Cynthia Hurley, told The Associated Press that, before they divorced about 17 years ago, his favorite movie was "Falling Down," the 1993 Michael Douglas film about a divorced, unemployed engineer on a shooting rampage.
"That always freaked me out," Hurley said. "He watched it incessantly. He thought it was hilarious. He had no compassion at all."
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