Carthage nursing home shooting
2009 attack in North Carolina, US
The Carthage nursing home shooting was a mass shooting that occurred on March 29, 2009, when a gunman opened fire at Pinelake Health and Rehabilitation, a 120-bed nursing home in Carthage, North Carolina, United States. The shooter, 45-year-old Robert Kenneth Stewart, killed eight people, including a nurse at the home, and wounded a ninth. He was shot and apprehended by a responding police officer, who was wounded by gunfire.
Stewart was said to have intended to kill his estranged wife, a nurse at the nursing home, who had hidden and survived the shooting unharmed. Initially charged with first degree murder, Stewart was tried in 2011 and convicted of eight counts of second degree murder. He was sentenced to 179 years, 4 months, and 20 days. It is the deadliest mass shooting in the State of North Carolina.
Shooting
Robert Stewart, 45, dressed in a bib overall, arrived at the parking lot of the nursing home just before 10:00 a.m., where he fired several shots at the empty car of his estranged wife, shattering its windows. Stewart then fired at the car of visitor Michael Lee Cotten as he was driving into the parking lot, hitting him in the left shoulder. Cotten, who later stated that Stewart was "very calm...very deliberate" during the shooting, managed to run into the building and warn the people inside of the gunman.
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