Glouco homicide leaves trail of bewilderment

The two Sumter County Sheriff's deputies who arrived that January morning at Maureen and Bill Compton's central Florida winter home found the Woodbury couple in their garden. She was spreading mulch; he was planting a bush in a flower bed.

The deputies said they were there about the couple's 27-year-old son, David. A mechanical engineer, he lived in South Philadelphia, in a neighborhood the Comptons felt was rough. Maureen Compton used to worry about that.

So when the deputies said he had been shot, the couple figured it was in the city, perhaps by a stray bullet, until they learned their son was shot early Jan. 5 at the Deptford house of a friend. It was at the home of James Stuart, Maureen Compton recalled the deputies saying. "Did you know him?" one deputy asked.

"He's a police officer," she said, incredulous.

The death has left a trail of bewilderment.

The Gloucester County prosecutor has charged Stuart, a 29-year-old Deptford police officer, with aggravated assault, alleging he shot David Compton in the face. Charges were upgraded to murder after Compton was taken off life support and died Jan. 11. It's the first time in nearly a quarter-century that a police officer in the county faces murder charges.

There didn't appear to be any animosity between Stuart and Compton, said Leonard Mahoney, a mutual friend and Compton's roommate. All three were part of a band of about 10 friends - doctors and engineers among them - who live "low-risk lives," he said. They often played paintball on weekends in high school and spent weekends together as adults; they rented beach homes together, attended one another's weddings.

Only Stuart may know what went so terribly wrong after he went back to his home with Compton around 2:30 a.m. after a night at Lazy Lanigan's, a bar in Sewell. Mahoney wasn't there, but he said he learned from friends that the two had planned to watch a DVD of the movie Judge Dredd together.

Stuart, who is out on bail, could not be reached for this article; his lawyer on Sunday declined to comment. Deptford police referred inquiries to the Prosecutor's Office, which declined to discuss details.

"We were nerds who followed the rules. I don't know what happened," said Mahoney, an accountant and Compton's friend since fifth grade.

David Compton's sister, Tracey Sharpe, wife of an advertising employee at The Inquirer's parent company, also is perplexed by why her brother was shot.

"He was just so peaceful and easy. There was nothing about my brother that incited anyone or angered anyone," she said Friday.

Like her brother, she was an adopted child, though not of Asian heritage, as he was. Being the older sibling, she recalled being protective of him, confronting schoolmates at St. Patrick's Elementary School in Woodbury when they teased him because he was Asian.

Bill, 61, and Maureen Compton, 60, have agonized over what might have happened in the 21/2 hours their son and Stuart were alone.

In interviews, Maureen Compton said that she never heard her son talk about guns and that he had no interest in guns.

Mahoney said Stuart had once allowed his gun to be passed around at a party, saying it was unloaded.

In an emergency call Stuart made to his department, he said to a dispatcher: "We had a, a, a man, he was, ah, playing with a weapon, it was loaded and, ah, he, there was a shot fired."

Stuart added that Compton "was playing with one of my weapons" but did not say who fired the shot.

The violent death of their son, whom they had adopted from Seoul, South Korea, as a chubby-cheeked infant, has plunged the Comptons into grief.

Maureen Compton sobs at reminders, like her son's laundry basket.

But they've found solace that in death their son has helped two strangers' lives through kidney donations.

"We're on the mend, but everything I read says you'll never be totally healed; there will be always be some of kind of anniversary," she said in her Woodbury kitchen.

Stuart's attorney, John Eastlack Jr., has described the shooting as a "horrible accident."

The Comptons don't accept that explanation. They note that their son was right-handed, and that the bullet traveled in a downward trajectory, piercing his lower left check, shattering his jawbone, nicking his carotid artery, and lodging against his spine.

Mahoney, 28, a Deptford native, met Compton at St. Patrick's. They were outsiders, he said, boys who preferred to play online games and watch science fiction.

"I was really good at meeting people, but David was really good at retaining friends," said Mahoney, who graduated from Deptford High School. David graduated from Woodbury High School.

Stuart was one of the group whom Mahoney introduced to Compton.

"It was all Deptford High band geeks - and David," Mahoney said.

Stuart played several instruments, including the baritone horn and trombone in Deptford's marching band.

"I don't think James ever had detention; he always followed the rules with everything. That's why this was so damn unbelievable," Mahoney said, recalling that Stuart did not even drink until he turned 21.

As an adult, however, drinking could make Stuart "punk you down," said Mahoney, who added that he was no longer friends with Stuart.

Mahoney said he recalled seeing Stuart's gun on the coffee table in Stuart's living room at one party.

"He was passing it around, and he was the one saying it wasn't loaded," Mahoney said, declining to say who else was present.

Mahoney was among scores of friends who spent days camping out in the lobby of Cooper University Hospital in Camden as Compton lay in a coma. They called the gathering "Camp David."

Some whispered into David's ear, imploring him to wake up, saying they would go to Flyers games together.

Maureen Compton brought a notebook for the group to write stories about David. She titled it "Letters to Dave."

"Whether it was two weeks, three weeks, three months, maybe he could fight his way back," she said.

But on Jan. 9, a doctor said Compton wasn't improving. He had gone 22 minutes without oxygen after he was shot, she said. Even if he did open his eyes, he might be in a vegetative state, doctors said.

The family decided to take him off life support; her son had wanted to be an organ donor, and keeping him longer on life support might have prevented his organs from being harvested, Maureen Compton said.

She encouraged everyone to "Flyer-up" for her son's final hours. The next day, in groups of two, friends wearing Flyers shirts and jerseys went to David Compton's room to say goodbye. A nurse draped a Flyers shirt over him. One of his kidneys went to a man in New Jersey, the other to a woman in Pennsylvania.

"There has to be a meaning to his death," Maureen Compton said.