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The second man charged in a 2020 shooting death was extradited to Halifax County today from Lexington County, South Carolina and will have a first district court appearance on November 27.

Leon Hunter was being held in the Halifax County Detention Center under a $250,000 secured bond, a bond that was set in 2020 when a grand jury returned a true bill of indictment against him for murder in the shooting death of 24-year-old Aaron Martin. The fatal shooting occurred at the Baymont Inn on September 14 of that year.

Roanoke Rapids police Chief Shane Guyant said the district attorney’s office will have to request that Hunter, 36, be held without the opportunity for bond.

Guyant said detectives S. Bryant and N. Bankert transported Hunter from Lexington County, South Carolina today and he was served with a warrant for first-degree murder.

Hunter was captured in Lexington County around 8 Friday morning. His brother, 24-year-old William Hunter, was arrested and charged in December of 2020.

Leon Hunter’s arrest came after Captain H. Phillips began a renewed effort of researching unsolved cases and unserved warrants in homicide investigations.

Phillips assigned Detective B. Biggerstaff to try to locate Leon Hunter.  

Within days Biggerstaff had found an address in Indiana but that information did not yield an arrest.

Leon Hunter was in Indiana sometime this summer and most likely moved to South Carolina in August.

Around two weeks ago Biggerstaff and other members of the department’s investigations bureau developed information that Leon Hunter was living in Lexington County, South Carolina.  

With intelligence gathered and shared with the United States Marshals Fugitive Task Force from the Eastern District of North Carolina and Columbia, South Carolina, Leon Hunter was taken into custody Friday morning.