A 78-year-old North Carolina man has pleaded guilty to murder in a fatal case of mistaken identity.
On Monday in Davie County Superior Court, Harold Reid, Jr., pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the death of 26-year-old Quintia Miller on October 3, 2022.
He also pleaded no contest to four unrelated sexual crimes including first-degree sex offense and two counts of indecent liberties with a child.
It was those sexual charges that led him to kill Miller, say authorities.
On Oct. 3, 2022, Reid was going to be tried for a first-degree sexual offense and indecent liberties with a child, the Davie County Sheriff’s Office said in a previous news release, the Charlotte Observer reports.
Authorities believe he went to the Rowan Pointe Apartments in Mocksville — where Miller was staying with family — searching for a woman who had accused him of molesting her as a child to stop her from testifying against him, the sheriff’s office said in the release.
Miller had been waiting for the school bus with her 6-year-old son, Kamari, and was heading back to her family’s apartment when she encountered Reid, her family wrote in a GoFundMe.
Reid mistook Miller for Shavonne Barnes, the person he was looking for. Then he confronted her and fatally shot her, the sheriff’s office said. (Barnes has identified herself publicly and spoken with the media.)
Officers with the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force and the sheriff’s office happened to be at the complex that morning for an unrelated matter when they heard shots.
They immediately took Reid into custody.
“I saw Quintia lying face down,” Barnes said at the time. “Reid was laying on top of her. The attack should have never been her. The bullet was meant for me.”
Barnes said Reid had molested her as a child.
“I knew from the point of his release, his goal was to kill me, and he made that very clear.”
“I also watched him lay on the ground, and his words to me were…’I was coming for you,'” she said. “Not only did he violate me, but he’s also taken an innocent life because he’s a coward.”
Reid was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole.
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