FROM STAFF REPORTS

Both suspects in a 1992 robbery and double murder in Statesville are now in custody.

Sheldon Demetrius Summers, 54, was arrested in Hope, N.J., on August 16 during a traffic stop by New Jersey State Police, Statesville Police Chief David Onley said in a news release Friday afternoon.

Summers was arrested and taken to Warren County Correctional Institution, where he currently remains pending extradition to North Carolina.

The other suspect, Reaco Wesley Burton, 50, is serving a 62-plus year prison sentence in North Carolina for an unrelated homicide, robbery and assault in Iredell County. According to the N.C. Department of Public Safety, his projected release date is November 9, 2052, when he will be 81 years old.

Summers and Burton both face two counts of murder, one count of assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury and four counts of armed robbery in connection with a robbery and shooting at a home on Washington Street that left Willie Gene Allison, 38, and Michael Scott III, 37, dead. A third man, Kirk Douglas Gray, 39, was also wounded but survived.

Onley announced on August 4 that an Iredell County grand jury had indicted Summers and Burton in the 30-year-old murder.

Retired SPD Chief Steve Hampton worked as a part-time investigator on the case for five years, amassing a 4,000-page case file.

On Friday, Onley thanked the U.S. Marshal Service Carolinas Regional Fugitive Task Force and the New York / New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force for their assistance in this case.