On December 4, 1994, police officers responded to a 911 call from a carful of men who passed a body in the road. They did not know if the man they saw -- 36-year-old Thomas Earl Priest -- was dead or alive.
By the time police arrived on the scene, Tommy's body had been hit by a car, drug some distance along the highway and left for dead. Police cleaned up Chippewa Street and filed the incident as a hit-and-run, ignoring clues that someone may have killed Tommy or left him in the roadway before he was hit by a car, Tommy's sister, Kim Wilkins, told NC WANTED.
If Tommy hadn't been beaten up or even killed, why was he lying in the road in the first place?, Kim reasoned.
Since police initially responded to the scene, they investigated the case as a possible homicide, but as Lumberton Lieutenant Johnny Barnes told NC WANTED, the case "has been a dead-end since not too long after it happened."
Kim has suspected foul play from the beginning, in part because the timeline of that night suggests that someone must have picked Tommy up from one side of town and left him on the side of town where his body was found. But because Tommy was eventually run over by a car, investigators and even the medical examiner were unable to determine whether Tommy was dead before the car hit him.
"When the police got there, he was in pretty bad shape, torn up pretty bad from getting run over by the car," said Lt. Barnes, who did not investigate the case but was a supervisor of Lumberton's investigative division. "So, when they did the autopsy, they weren’t able to tell if he was dead before the car hit him or dead because of the car hitting him… The big question was how he got from across town where he got out of his car to this point – where he got hit by the car.”
Tommy Priest went to a nightclub with his girlfriend in Lumberton the night of December 3, 1994. Tommy had recently separated from his wife, with whom he had 2 daughters. When he left the nightclub in the early morning hours of December 4, witnesses told police that he and his girlfriend were arguing.
They drove away from the club and soon came upon a police roadblock. They pulled over to avoid the roadblock, but officers approached the car and advised that neither one of them was sober enough to drive and that they should call for a ride. At that point, Tommy and his girlfriend split up. She walked to a local store, called a friend to pick her up and went back to the car to wait.
What happened to Tommy from there remains a mystery. Witnesses said he walked from his car to a nearby Waffle House, but was turned away because his hand was bleeding. The next person who saw Tommy alive was four miles across town on Chippewa Street. That man, who was questioned by police several times, said that he saw Tommy about 15 or 20 minutes before his body was found -- which would mean that Tommy traveled 4 miles in about a half hour.
Kim and Lt. Barnes are both skeptical that Tommy could have walked that distance in such a short time, but Lt. Barnes said he couldn't speculate whether foul play was involved in Tommy's death.
Kim believes the man who last saw her brother knows more than he is letting on.
"He told the police he was on Chippewa Street on his way to the bridge to check cat hooks. Well, it’s December 4th. You don’t set cat hooks in December... He later recanted and said he was going to the bridge to drink beers," Kim explained.
“This man told police that Tommy asked him for a cigarette, which I do not believe because I found a whole pack at the scene the next day. Plus he had a carton in his car… I don’t think he would have walked 4 miles without a cigarette," she said.
Kim also said that Tommy's wallet was found about 250 yards from his body. While it is not unusual for the belongings of a person who has been hit by a car to be thrown some distance, what was unusual was that Tommy's wallet was cleaned out. The only thing left in the wallet when police found it was Tommy's fishing license, which they used to identify the body.
With so many questions left unanswered, Governor Mike Easley announced this month that the state of North Carolina will pay $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for Tommy's death. Whether the case is a hit and run or a homicide, whoever killed Tommy Priest should be brought to justice, the governor's proclamation states.
Kim hopes the case can be solved, but acknowledged that the tragedy of her brother's death reaches beyond her own family.
"It’s very frustrating. Life goes on, you know, but you just wonder what happened? Even if we found out today who did it, it doesn’t matter. You know, that person still has family that loves them. So, it’s not just us going through it; if the suspect actually came forward and said, 'yeah, I did it,' their family is going to go through pain and hardship too," she said.
If you have any information about the unsolved case of Tommy Priest, call NC WANTED toll free at 1.866.43.WANTED (1.866.439.2683) or click on "Report a Tip" Your identity can be kept confidential.
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