Mason Cole Pridemore

Mason Cole Pridemore was a 22-year-old White man from Hickory, North Carolina, who was known for being hard-working and motivated. His brother remembered him as someone who wanted people to be the best they could be. Just hours before he died, Mason stopped by to give his grandmother, Sharon, a hug and tell her he loved her. "One of my babies is gone," she later said.

On the evening of Thursday, February 20, 2025, an employee at a Marco’s Pizza noticed an SUV that had been left running for several hours in the adjacent parking lot of Tabernacle Christian School. When the employee went to check on the driver, he found him unresponsive and called 911. Hickory Police officers responded to the scene at 1405 29th Avenue Drive NE around 10 p.m. and discovered Mason inside the vehicle, deceased from an apparent gunshot wound.

Investigators began a homicide investigation, recovering surveillance footage from the school and the nearby pizza restaurant. According to court documents, the video showed two people getting out of Mason’s SUV and running away. A friend of Mason’s told police that he had planned to sell a gun to someone on the night he was killed. Officers also found a firearm still in its holster inside a compartment in the driver's side door of the SUV. A school resource officer from Hickory High School was able to identify two teenagers from the surveillance footage.

Two days later, on February 22, police arrested two 17-year-old suspects. They were both charged with first-degree murder and were initially held without bond in the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice.

In March 2025, a grand jury indicted the two teenagers, Antonio Harris Jr. and Andrew Smith, on murder charges. The district attorney’s office announced that both would be tried as adults, a decision influenced by a new North Carolina law allowing for such charges in serious offenses. "I know they’re kids but you made an adult decision so that’s kind of the consequence," said Mason’s stepmother, Cody Leatherman. As of March 2025, the case was proceeding through the adult criminal court system.