NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — Bruce Hisle, the man accused in the December 2023 shooting death of James Carter at his store on Lindenwood Avenue in Norfolk, was found guilty of second-degree murder Thursday.

The jury found Hisle guilty of three additional felonies – two gun charges, and aggravated malicious wounding when a second victim was shot but survived.

Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Scott Miles warned the jury at the outset that the trial would present a challenge with conflicting testimony and witnesses with felony records. It did not disappoint, with some witnesses pointing to Bruce Hisle, and others pointing to his brother Dennis as the one who killed Carter. Dennis Hisle was called as a witness by the prosecution, refused to testify, and was held in contempt.

Some of the most damning evidence implicating Bruce Hisle came late in the case. The jury heard a series of phone recordings from one of Bruce Hisle’s co-defendants, Tamika Credle. Those calls came shortly after she, Bruce Hisle, and his brother, Dennis Hisle, were arrested in connection to Carter’s shooting death.

While it wasn’t a police interrogation, and it wasn’t a sworn statement, in those conversations, she implicated Bruce Hisle as the one who killed the 84-year-old Carter, the popular Triple-C convenience store owner.

Right after Carter was shot dead, police arrested three people — Credle, Bruce Hisle and Dennis Hisle, the latter of whom was originally charged with killing Carter.

Eleven months later, the Commonwealth transferred the murder charge from Dennis Hisle to Bruce Hisle, with Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi saying the evidence showed Bruce Hisle should be the one tried for the killing. Credle was found guilty in March of being an accessory after the fact in a felony and was sentenced to a year in prison, with six months suspended and 12 months of unsupervised probation.

The day after the three were arrested, Credle made three phone calls that were recorded while she was sitting in a room in police custody. She called the daughter she shares with Bruce Hisle, his mother and her own father.

The jury in Bruce Hisle’s murder trial heard and saw that recording, and, at various times in that one-hour, 40 minute recording, Credle said her to daughter, “Your … dad decided to shoot.” Again, to her daughter, “Bruce [Hisle] shot Mr. Carter, and I’m the one being punished.”

And in the call with her father, Credle said “Bruce [Hisle] decided to shoot somebody, and he killed someone.”

Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Scott Miles showed those three clips in his closing argument. The jury returned the guilty verdict after two-and-a-half hours of deliberation.

“My grandfather was a pillar to the community, and it’s crazy that the same community that he gave his all to was the same one that took him away,” Breonna Carter said outside the courthouse. “Justice was served today. It’s very unfortunate, but it needed to be done.”

Defense attorney Cole Roberts said Bruce Hisle plans to appeal.

“Certainly my client is disappointed. It’s not over,” he said. “This was a difficult case, it was like herding cats with a lot of these witnesses. So it was a tragic event. The jury had to deal with quite a bit.”

Originally, it was Bruce Hisle’s brother, Dennis Hisle, who was charged with killing Carter until last fall, when Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi announced that the evidence showed, instead, that Bruce Hisle should be the one tried for the killing.

Hisle had been charged with first-degree murder, but the jury found him guilty of second-degree murder.

“It’s been really tough,” Breonna Carter said regarding the past 20 months. “It’s been a long time coming, a lot of disappointments, a lot of delays. But today was the day that we really needed as a family.”

The jury had previously heard from Carter’s daughter, Georgia Carter, who had warned her father not to go outside after she heard men arguing that evening, but almost as soon as he went out, a bullet struck Carter in the head, killing him.

Bruce and Dennis Hisle had gotten into a heated discussion with Dommion McLean outside the convenience store. McLean’s friend since childhood, Shontel Credle, who served 25 years in prison, testified he wanted to be a peacemaker.

Shontel Credle walked across Lindenwood Avenue to a white Toyota Sienna van where, according to his testimony, the Hisles were selling liquor. He then returned back across the street toward McLain and the front of the store, and that’s when the shooting began, with one of the bullets striking and killing Carter, and another hitting Shontel Credle in the right rib and exiting out his back.

On the second day of the trial, Dennis Hisle refused to be sworn in to testify, and he was found guilty of contempt of court and sentenced to an additional year in prison, which went on top of the four years he is currently serving after a plea agreement had him admit to two gun charges. That deal did not require him to testify.

The prosecution still called him as a witness, and as he entered the courtroom in his jail jumpsuit, he looked at Judge Tasha Scott and said, “I’m not testifying.” After three attempts to get him to be sworn in, that’s when the judge gave Dennis Hisle the additional one year sentence.

Fatehi praised his prosecutors, Miles and Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Anthony Balady, in what Fatehi called a terrible crime.

“We judge ourselves on hard work and caring, no matter what the verdict,” Fatehi said in a statement. “Thank you to the jurors for showing up and working carefully through a complicated set of facts. Above all, my continued condolences to Mr. Carter’s family and to everyone who loved him. Nothing we have done will bring Mr. Carter back, but I hope that the convictions in these cases will offer a measure of peace.”