Orange County officials in North Carolina have released the 911 call from a witness who came across the bodies of deceased 14-year-old Lyric Woods and 18-year-old Devin Clark on Sept. 17.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office announced that they had a petition for a 17-year-old suspect’s arrest, but state and federal officials are still assisting the county with tracking down the juvenile suspect as of Monday — more than a week after the mysterious double-murder occurred.
“I guess I was just calling in to report a non-emergency, but it is a pretty serious issue. I would like to speak to the officer in person, but what we have found is, we’ve actually discovered two dead bodies,” the witness who called in the crime scene told police in a Sept. 17 call to 911 obtained by Fox News Digital.
ATV riders found the teenage friends shot to death on Sept. 17 after their families last saw them on Sept. 16 and reported them missing the next morning, according to authorities
The caller added in his 911 call that there was no address where he found the bodies. They were located bedside a gravel road beneath power lines parallel to an ATV trail in a rural area off of Buckhorn Road n Mebane.
“They’re just laying on the side of the road,” the caller said in the 911 call.
The caller offered to go back to the scene until officers arrived. “We’ll go back to the scene cause we were on four-wheelers…when we discovered them. So we actually came home, and I let my dad know what was going on, and he told me what to do. So, we’ll actually go drive back there, and we’ll meet the police officers and show them where they are.”
NORTH CAROLINA DOUBLE MURDER: FAMILIES OF DEVIN CLARK, LYRIC WOODS TO SAY FINAL GOODBYES
A memorial was set up at the site after Woods and Clark were found dead. Locals have dropped off flowers and other mementos at the memorial in the days since their deaths.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office on Sept. 20 announced that it had filed a petition to charge the juvenile suspect with two counts of first-degree murder in Clark’s and Woods’ shooting deaths.
“The North Carolina General Statutes prohibit the release of all records and files pertaining to cases of juveniles under supervision of juvenile court counselors,” Sheriff Charles Blackwood said in a Monday statement.” A record includes, but is not limited to, information obtained from witnesses, laboratory tests, surveillance, confidential informants, investigators, photographs, measurements, and officer case notes.”
A different subsection of the North Carolina law “explicitly provides that law enforcement shall withhold these materials from public inspection unless the case is transferred to superior court,” Blackwood continued.
“We cannot afford a misstep this close to the goal line,” the sheriff said.
Clark was a junior at East Alamance High School in Mebane, where he played football. Woods was a freshman at Cedar Ridge High School in Hillsborough.
It is unclear what the pair were doing together when they disappeared on Friday or how they were shot dead by Saturday afternoon.
Authorities are asking anyone with information to contact Orange County Investigator Keith Goodwin at 919-245-2918.
