Obediah Hester IV, 27, was shot and killed on November 12, 2014, behind a trailer at 1071 Wards Road in Wallace, North Carolina. Hester had been a state witness in a 2012 Wilmington murder case involving Brian Grant and was scheduled to testify against Nashid Porter in an upcoming trial. Porter, who was out on pretrial release in the 2012 murder, lured Hester to an abandoned mobile home on Wards Road after asking him to come by his house and then shot him execution-style.

The Duplin County Sheriff’s Office led the investigation. Porter was charged with first-degree murder, initially rejected a plea offer in May 2015, and later pled guilty, receiving a life sentence without parole. Hester’s mother, April Williams, and his grandmothers, Sarah Bragg and Thelma Williams, described the family’s grief. Hester was the father of three sons, then ages 16, 9, and 7, two of whom had been diagnosed with a kidney disease.

Does anyone have memories of Obediah or information about his life in Rose Hill or Wallace that could add to this record?