Friend remembers fight between defendant murdered student Shaw

Testimony resumed Wednesday in the trial of Edwin Christopher Lawing a Concord man charged in the murder of a student from Shaw University 1996.

Lacoy McQueen, 20, was reported missing May 17, 1996, when she never returned to her room after she told her roommate was meeting Lawing in the steeple of the North Carolina State University. A construction crew found the remains off the highway 1 near Kittrell nine months later.

Lawing, a student at NC State at the time, was initially arrested in the case, but prosecutors dismissed a charge of murder against him due to lack of evidence.

He was charged again in December 2014 after investigators who refused to give up the scientific evidence used in cases not available in the 1990s to connect him once again with the murder. He is now on trial for first degree murder.

Lawing of several friends took the stand on Wednesday and tried to remember the day he disappeared McQueen.

His former roommate, Jason Hillger said he remembered a woman being in the dorm room with Lawing that day, and Lawing asking to stop for a couple of hours.

"He asked me to leave because they were discussing some things," he said.

Another friend, Richard Enoch, recalled a fight between Lawing and McQueen, where Lawing said he grabbed her by the shoulders.

"I grabbed (Lawing) and told him to calm down," Enoch said. "I do not remember what was said, but I remember breaking point."

On Tuesday, the college roommate of McQueen, Stephanie Jones Jeffries said McQueen was pregnant, and she and Lawing had been discussing pregnancy when she disappeared.

Officers from different agencies investigating the disappearance of McQueen, which began with the campus police in the state of North Carolina and Shaw University, said that Lawing stories were inconsistent and seemed nervous when giving opening statements.

Initially, McQueen refused Lawing see the day she disappeared, but then admitted that meet to discuss pregnancy.

"I asked him why he lied about it," said Detective DA Proctor, a former police Shaw University. "He said he did not want people to know that they had been discussing."

Lawing told police McQueen ran and got into a car with two men he did not know.

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