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Police believe ‘paintball war’ connected to North Carolina teen’s death

Posted at 7:09 PM, May 01, 2018
and last updated 2018-05-01 19:09:12-04

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Flowers, candles and stuffed animals still mark the spot where 19-year-old Zyquarius Shalom Quadre Bradley was shot and killed on Beck Street in Greensboro on April 20.

"Out of nowhere we just hear a car pulling up,” said Keyeion Menefee, who was hanging out with Bradley that night.

"We just hear gunshots,” said Ali Haywood, who was also at the scene.

The two recalled running as soon as they heard the shots, saying it all happened so fast.

"Trying to do CPR and stuff, I was holding his head,” Haywood told WGHP.

Greensboro police said the shooting was related to a paintball war happening around the city between young people.

"It's all over social media, you know, everybody have their own teams,” Menefee said.

Police say they’ve dealt with 39 paintball-related incidents from assault to vandalism in April. They found Bradley’s car splattered with paint the night of the homicide and confiscated paintball guns from Bradley roughly an hour before the homicide on another call.

"We strongly believe that these activities led to the death of a young man,” Capt. Nathaniel Davis said.

Davis says the crimes have been happening all over the city and they’ll be strong in enforcing the laws when it comes to these crimes moving forward.

"This is not safe and this is not something that's acceptable,” Davis said. "There's a family that's lost the life of a young person and that continues to bother me. It bothers me personally as a man in this community that another young man has lost his life. And so with that we want to make sure people understand the seriousness of what's going on."

People in the neighborhood say they’ve been dealing with paintball vandalism for the past month. One woman says she cleans her house at least once a week from random drive-byes.

"When you going around like that, shooting up people's houses, there's gonna be somebody that don't like it, there's gonna be somebody who don't want to play,” Haywood said. "They just take it to the next level I guess."