Shooting of Rock Hill dad unsolved a year later

Antoniya Hood has been asked the same question by friends and teachers during the last year. She’s never liked the answer she has given

“People come up to me and ask, ‘Did they ever find your dad’s murderer?’” says Hood, 17. “And I gotta tell them, ‘No.’”

Hood’s father, 41-year-old Antonio “Tony” Heath, was shot to death just inside the door of his family’s home in Deerfield Run apartments the night of Nov. 24, 2014. No arrests have been made in the year-old case.

“I want to bring it back to light so he doesn’t get forgotten,” Heath’s widow, Carrie, said. “I don’t see how anyone could sleep at night knowing they’ve killed someone’s son, brother and father.”

‘If you like it, I love it’

Lois Shelby remembers her son as being well-liked, from childhood and into adulthood.

“Everybody loved him,” she said. “I always had a crowd at my house, and everybody was looking for Tony.”

They couldn’t make a trip to the mall without Heath introducing her to everyone who knew him by name, Shelby said. Tall for his age, Heath was too clumsy to play basketball but enjoyed outdoor activities and working on cars.

His family and friends remember Heath’s devotion to his family, and Shelby specifically remembers his attentiveness to her aging mother.

“He would be the first one at the nursing home, and he would stay until I got there or someone else got there,” she said. “He was there every day.”

Carrie Heath remembers her husband as the life of the party who loved making people laugh. He also liked helping people, remembering Heath changing a flat tire for an elderly couple stranded in the rain, she said.

The Heath couple spent time outdoors, she said, from visiting state parks to fishing to para sailing. She taught Heath to swim in the pool at Deerfield Run when he was 35, and they went tubing last year before he died.

“It’s something he said he would never ever do because he couldn’t swallow all that water,” Carrie said, laughing. “He said he was terrified, but he didn’t want to hear my mouth, so he went anyways. That was his favorite saying: ‘If you like it, I love it.’ ”

‘I’ve been shot – call 911’

Things were winding down the Monday evening of Nov. 24 a year ago, Carrie recalled. Family members, including her sister, Terri Caines, had gathered to watch live coverage of a Missouri grand jury’s decision not to indict the Ferguson police officer who fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown.

“It said at 9 o’clock the verdict would come,” Carrie said. “(Heath) stepped outside to go talk to his friend about 8:45.”

Heath again went outside at the next commercial break to smoke a cigarette, said Caines, who is the only other smoker in the family.

“I didn’t go out there with him that night,” she said. “It seemed like seconds after he went to go smoke, we hear feet shuffling in the hallway. Tony blows through the door and gets the door shut; he leans back against the door, and that’s when the shots came through the door.”

“That’s when he said, ‘I’ve been shot – call 911.’”

Heath died at a hospital from a gunshot wound to the leg.

There were three adults and five children in the apartment at the time of the shooting.

“He could have took off running,” Caines said. “I think he got back in the house because he knew our mom had been murdered that way in York, and I think that’s why Tony fought to get back in the house because he knew we had already dealt with it and wanted to make sure we were safe.”

‘Somebody knows what happened’

Investigators have not determined a motive for the shooting and have little information to go on, said Capt. Mark Bollinger, a Rock Hill Police spokesman.

“We got a few tips that came in, but nothing panned out to complete the investigation,” he said. “Unfortunately, we’re no closer to solving the case.”

Some people said they heard the gunshots or heard a vehicle, Bollinger said. So far no one has come forward to say they saw something.

“This is another one of those frustrating ones where investigators know somebody knows what happened, and they haven’t come forward yet,” Bollinger said. “We know the people involved have probably talked about it since then.”

Shelby knows the people who killed her son have talked, and others have too.

“The hard part is people calling you and saying, ‘I heard so-and-so did it,’” she said. “I had to ask people, ‘If you can’t go to the police, don’t call me and tell me anything else.’”

Making the loss even more significant for his family was how Heath turned his life around after run-ins with the law.

Heath had several convictions from 1991 to 2003, including trafficking cocaine and trafficking crack, according to State Law Enforcement Division records. Carrie Heath said he “turned his life all the way around” after his last arrest in 2003.

“That’s not the reason he got shot,” she said. “He was not doing what he was doing before. He wanted to do better for his family.”

Heath became a more attentive and involved father after his second run-in with the law and the birth of their twins, she said. He went to his kids’ games. Just minutes before he was shot Heath was talking to his middle son on the phone about his basketball game.

‘Tony really showed me what to do’

Candle light flickered across Tyler Vaughn’s face Tuesday night as he recalled the “finishing school” Heath gave him growing up.

“Tony really showed me what to do and what not to do,” Vaughn, 24, recalled. “Some of the mistakes I made, he cussed me out about. He showed me that you can slip up in life and (still) become a better person.”

Vaughn was one of more than three dozen friends and family members who lit candles in Heath’s memory at Fountain Park on Tuesday night.

Heath’s brother, Jackie, wore a Tampa Bay Buccaneers jacket to Tuesday’s vigil. He recalled his brother, a Carolina Panthers fan, teasing him while they watched Panthers’ games.

“Every time I see the Panthers winning, I hear him saying, ‘I’m telling you, I’m telling you,’” Jackie Heath said. “He’s finally getting some of the glory of that.”

‘They could be right beside you’

Caines hopes telling people about Heath, and the good memories they have of him, will persuade someone with information to come forward.

“We had to practically watch him pass away,” she said, her voice crackling with tears. “That’s the worst feeling in the world; it’s completely out of your hands.”

Antoniya Hood remembers being angry at her father for missing her birthday party because of work last year. She said they made up just three days before he died.

“My birthday was a couple weeks ago; I just broke down because he wasn’t there,” she said. “He didn’t get to see me drive. He won’t get to see me graduate, go to prom, walk me down the aisle.”

Hood learned how to drive. She now wonders if she’s ever pulled up at an intersection next to her father’s killer.

“They could be right beside you,” she said. “You could be driving next to the person and not even know – that’s the person who killed my daddy.”

Carrie Heath is thankful for how their family has stuck together the past year. Before Heath’s death, they had planned to explore Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina over the Thanksgiving holiday.

“I said, ‘I want to go up there and see the foliage,’” she recalled. “He was like, ‘You gonna get me across that crinkly bridge?’ We never made it up there. I still haven’t been up to Grandfather Mountain.”

This story was originally published November 28, 2015 at 8:07 PM with the headline "Shooting of Rock Hill dad unsolved a year later."