NC man excuses himself from table then kills family members with car

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The Sunday lunch rush was underway at the Surf and Turf Lodge in Bessemer City, N.C., a restaurant about 30 miles west of Charlotte. Inside the rustic eatery with wooden plank walls, Roger Self, a former police officer turned private investigator, was eating appetizers with his family. Around noon, the 62-year-old got up from the table. The family thought he was going to the restroom, the Gaston Gazette later reported.

Moments later, waiter Brandon Wilson was heading to check on the table when a sound shattered the dining room.

“I saw a white Jeep just fly past my face,” Wilson told the Gazette. “It was so unreal. I saw chairs and tables and cups just flying everywhere. It just sounded like a tornado.”

With Self behind the wheel, the car blasted through the restaurant’s log cabin facade, punching into the heart of the building and colliding with the table where Self’s family was sitting, police said. Through curtains of dust, patrons and employees saw some people still pinned beneath the wreckage. “I helped paramedics move tables off this dude, and I moved debris out of the way so they could get to him,” a busboy told WSOC.

On Sunday afternoon, police confirmed that two people were killed in the crash. But the deaths were not the result of an accident, police said. They allege that Self intentionally drove his car into the building.

Self was taken into custody and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. According to WSOC, one of those killed was Self’s daughter, Katelyn Self, 26, a deputy with the Gaston County Sheriff’s Office. The other victim has been identified as Amanda Self, Roger Self’s daughter-in-law, who was an emergency room nurse and the mother of two, the station reported. Three others were injured, including Amanda Self’s 13-year-old daughter, according to the Gazette.

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