By Nicholas Langhorne
The Tidewater News

Gunshots at Southampton Meadows mobile home park don’t alarm Shawanda Harris, who has lived there for five years.

Murder does.

“I hear so many shots. I don’t even think about it anymore,” Harris said Monday of Thursday night’s murder of 28-year-old Darrin Lee, who lived less than 100 yards from her.

When she learned Lee — an acquaintance of her husband — was dead, Harris said, she felt empty, lost and confused.

“I could hear his momma and his sister and them outside just hollering,” Harris said.

Lee died just before midnight after being shot in the head outside his home in the 31000 block of Darden Street, according to the Southampton County Sheriff’s Office.

Darrin L. Robinson, 20, Bruce L. Boone, 18, and Dayquan Eley, 18, all of Suffolk, were arrested and will be arraigned today on first-degree murder charges, said Capt. G.H. Drewery of the sheriff’s office.

Deputies on patrol reported hearing shots fired at 11:37 p.m. They found Lee, who 20 minutes later was pronounced dead.

Harris said she understood deputies were nearby for a separate incident when the fatal shots were fired. They caught one suspect near the shooting scene, while the other two fled. By early Friday evening, police indicated three arrests had been made.

As of Monday, Drewery said, police did not know of a motive for the murder.

Harris, who went to Franklin High School with Lee, said she can’t figure out why anyone would want to kill him.

“I don’t get it,” Harris said. “He was quiet as far as I knew.”

When Lee would work on vehicles, he sometimes would ask Harris’ husband for help.

Southampton Meadows resident Tracy Sebrell said he didn’t know Lee and heard about the shooting the next morning.

“I thought it was thunder that woke me up,” he said about hearing the gunshots. “I was sleeping that time of night.”

Sebrell said the mobile home park off Route 258 between Franklin and the North Carolina line is normally quiet, but “things happen sometimes.”

The three suspects are being held in separate jails as the investigation continues.