‘Senseless act’: Man shot and killed after fender bender in Mount Holly, neighbor says

MOUNT HOLLY, N.C. — A woman is heartbroken after someone shot and killed her husband in their driveway.

She says her neighbor told her her husband would not move his car, so he shot him.

The victim was killed along Grandhaven Drive late Monday night. The suspect was in court Tuesday afternoon.

Julie Lark, the victim’s widow, now wants to know why something so minor ended with her losing her husband.

Before the incident, the neighbors liked each other.

Now one family is preparing for a second-degree murder trial. The other is mourning a man who left home to get food and never got any farther than the neighbor’s driveway.

“You just don’t think that would happen,” Julie said. She said she can’t look at her neighbor’s home without thinking of her husband dying there Monday night.

She said her husband Thomas Lark was happy when he left their Mount Holly home to get groceries to make a Labor Day meal. She heard the car pull out of the driveway, even heard what she now realizes was gunshots, followed by a knock on her door minutes later, and a neighbor’s frantic voice.

“He’s been shot,” the neighbor said. “Come quick, Ms. Julie.”

She found her husband’s car had a scratched rear bumper. Prosecutors say he had been shot three times and was lying next to neighbor Jaelan Drum’s SUV.

“He said, ‘I told your husband to back up and he didn’t back up, so I shot him,’” said Julie.

Drum told a judge it wasn’t intentional.

“I need to apologize ‘cause I truly was protecting myself,” Drum said on Tuesday.

He told the judge he begged his neighbor to leave him alone.

Lark said Drum told her he didn’t intend to kill her husband, but she asks how can a fender bender between neighbors end in murder.

“This was a senseless act,” Julie said.

Lark said they had been married for 24 years, and Thomas would have celebrated his 58th birthday Saturday.

Drum asked the judge to let him go with a GPS monitor to provide for his wife and child.

The judge ruled he is not eligible for bond.

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