Investigative records trace years of personal tension before a March confrontation that ended with Capt. Adam Bean fatally shot in a front yard.
HOPE MILLS, N.C. — The first warning signs in the case against North Carolina State Highway Patrol Sgt. Nekime Matu Oxendine did not begin on the night Capt. Adam Bean was killed. Search warrants describe years of messages showing recurring concern about relationships, loyalty and the continued presence of one man in the other’s personal life.
Those communications now form part of the background to a far more consequential dispute: whether Oxendine, 44, murdered Bean, 42, outside a Hope Mills-area home on March 27 or fired in lawful self-defense as Bean advanced toward him. A Cumberland County grand jury has indicted Oxendine on first-degree murder, and a judge has denied his request for bond after reviewing affidavits supporting his self-defense claim. Prosecutors do not plan to seek the death penalty. The competing versions have not been resolved at trial, and Oxendine is presumed innocent unless proved guilty.
The woman at the center of the investigative chronology had separate long-term relationships with both law enforcement officers, according to warrants. She and Oxendine had dated before she entered a relationship with Bean. She later lived with Bean, but that relationship ended and she moved out in December 2025. She subsequently reconciled with Oxendine. Investigators reviewing electronic communications said concerns about the other man did not disappear when the relationships changed. Instead, messages cited in court records show that each man had at different times discussed the other’s continuing connection to her.
Records from 2022 and 2023 show that Oxendine questioned whether the woman and Bean were romantically involved during an earlier period of his relationship with her. Later, while Bean and the woman were together, Bean acknowledged that Oxendine’s repeated appearance in their lives bothered him, even as Bean focused messages on his own plans for a future with her. Investigators included those exchanges in search-warrant affidavits not as a final answer to the shooting but as evidence of the relationship history they were attempting to reconstruct.
By early 2026, the personal arrangement had changed again. The woman was no longer living with Bean and had resumed her relationship with Oxendine. According to the warrants, Oxendine remained worried that Bean could draw her back into their former relationship. In messages investigators attributed to him, he questioned how she viewed Bean and expressed fear that their reconciliation could put Oxendine in the same position he believed he had faced before. Authorities also said he asked her to delete communications from Bean, including messages that arrived after the shooting. The significance of any deleted messages will be a matter for investigators and, potentially, the court.
Bean initiated contact on March 27, according to the records. He wanted to speak with the woman, and she initially indicated that a conversation might take place. Later that evening, she said she was in bed and did not want him to come over. Bean nevertheless drove to her Seattle Slew Lane residence. The warrant account says he notified her that he was outside and threatened to make noise with his vehicle if she did not come out. She went outside, where Bean allegedly questioned why Oxendine’s truck was parked at the home.
The confrontation that followed lasted only a fraction of the time covered by the years of messages. According to the woman’s statement to investigators, Oxendine came outside carrying a handgun. Bean got out of his vehicle and moved toward him. She said Oxendine discharged shots into the ground as warnings but Bean continued to approach. She then heard additional gunfire and saw Bean move backward and fall in the front yard. That witness account is important to Oxendine’s defense, but prosecutors obtained a first-degree murder indictment after reviewing the broader investigation.
Deputies were dispatched to the home at about 10:53 p.m. When the first responders arrived, the woman was performing CPR on Bean, investigative records say. He was pronounced dead at the scene. A handgun was found nearby, and the State Bureau of Investigation assumed responsibility for examining the shooting. Agents sought warrants for electronic devices, vehicles and other evidence as they worked to establish the order of events and to place the statements of those involved alongside physical and digital evidence.
For several months, the public knew considerably less. The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office initially said only that Bean, an off-duty captain, had died in a domestic dispute involving another off-duty law enforcement officer. Officials said the shooting did not appear random and that there was no ongoing threat to the public. It was the later release of warrant documents that identified Oxendine as the officer the witness said had fired the shots and disclosed the relationship history investigators believed was relevant to the confrontation.
The criminal case did not arrive immediately after those records became public. The SBI continued its investigation and eventually submitted the matter to a special prosecutor. Court records show that a grand jury reviewed the case in August and directed prosecutors to seek a first-degree murder indictment. Another grand jury returned that indictment in September. Oxendine was arrested and appeared before Superior Court Judge James Floyd Ammons Jr., beginning the first phase in which his defense position became part of the public court record.
Oxendine asked the court to release him while the case was pending. Ammons’ subsequent order shows that the judge reviewed affidavits from both Oxendine and the woman that supported the claim that Bean was shot in self-defense. The judge also weighed Oxendine’s long career with the Highway Patrol, his community ties, the lack of a previous criminal record cited in the order and possible restrictions such as secured bond, surrender of weapons or electronic monitoring. Ammons declined to set bond and ordered him to remain in custody.
The bond ruling did not decide whether the self-defense claim is true. Instead, it left the central factual and legal dispute for later proceedings. The defense can argue that Bean’s movement toward Oxendine created a threat serious enough to justify deadly force. Prosecutors, in pursuing first-degree murder, can challenge that interpretation using the witness statements, electronic records, physical evidence and whatever other admissible evidence emerges. The public warrant accounts do not substitute for the evidence a jury may eventually hear, and not every investigative detail necessarily will be admitted at trial.
Both men brought extensive law-enforcement experience to the encounter. Oxendine had served with the Highway Patrol for about 18 years. Bean joined the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office in 2006 and eventually became a captain and assistant chief of detectives. The bond judge noted that the officers had professional training relating to confrontation, de-escalation, use of force and self-defense. That background made the circumstances unusual, the court said, but did not create a different legal standard for deciding whether Oxendine should be released.
Bean was later honored by his agency for his public-service work, including efforts to improve a career-development and compensation plan within the sheriff’s office. County officials remembered him as a nearly 20-year employee who had served the community for much of his adult career. The recognition came as the criminal inquiry into his death moved toward an indictment, placing his professional record alongside a private relationship history that became public because investigators considered it relevant to the homicide.
The messages and warrants tell investigators where tension may have existed, but they cannot by themselves answer the question that matters most in the prosecution: whether Oxendine’s decision to fire at Bean was criminal or justified. As of Oct. 21, Oxendine remains held without bond on the first-degree murder charge. His next court date is scheduled for Nov. 4, and no trial date has been publicly established in the records reviewed.
Author note: Last updated October 21, 2026.