Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Man wanted in NC shooting waives extradition from Florida

A North Carolina man accused of shooting and wounding a 6-year-old girl and her parents waived extradition during a brief hearing in a Florida courtroom

Curt Anderson
Friday 21 April 2023 11:10 EDT

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

A North Carolina man accused of shooting and wounding a 6-year-old girl and her parents after children went to retrieve a basketball that had rolled into his yard waived extradition during a brief court appearance Friday morning in Florida.

Robert Louis Singletary, 24, was arrested Thursday in the Tampa area by Hillsborough County deputies, according to online jail records. He wore a dark colored protective vest during the hearing.

Singletary replied, “indeed,” when Hillsborough Circuit Judge Catherine Caitlin asked if he would sign the waiver to allow officials to take him back to North Carolina to face charges in Tuesday's shooting of the girl and her parents. He will be held without bond on a fugitive warrant.

The judge said she would hold another detention hearing if North Carolina officials haven't picked Singletary up by April 24.

Singletary is facing four counts of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with the intent to kill inflicting serious injury, and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Gaston County Police Chief Stephen Zill said at a news conference Wednesday that his department and the U.S. Marshals Service's Regional Fugitive Task Force had been conducting a broad search for Singletary, who fled after the Tuesday night shootings near Gastonia, a city of roughly 80,000 people west of Charlotte. Singletary had been out on bond in a December attack in which authorities say he assaulted a woman with a hammer.

Zill declined to say what sparked Tuesday's attack, explaining that the investigation was ongoing.

A neighbor, Jonathan Robertson, said the attack happened after some children went to retrieve a basketball that had rolled into Singletary's yard. He said Singletary, who had yelled at the children on several occasions since moving to the neighborhood, went inside his home, came back out with a gun and began shooting as parents frantically tried to get their kids to safety.

A 6-year-old girl, Kinsley White, was grazed by a bullet in the left cheek and was treated at a hospital and released, she and her family said. Her father, Jamie White, who had run to her aid, was shot in the back and remained hospitalized Thursday, according to Kinsley's grandfather and neighbor, Carl Hilderbrand. The girl's mother, Ashley Hilderbrand, was grazed in the elbow. Authorities say Singletary also shot at another man but missed.

It is the latest in a string of recent U.S. shootings that occurred for apparently trivial reasons, including the wounding of a Black teenage honors student in Missouri who went to the wrong address to pick up his younger brothers, the killing of a woman who was in a car that pulled into the wrong upstate New York driveway, and the wounding of two Texas cheerleaders after one apparently mistakenly got into a car that she thought was her own.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in