Inset: Bruce Hisle (Norfolk County Sheriff's Office). Background: The Triple-C convenience store where the victim was shot on Lindenwood Avenue in Norfolk, Va. (Google Maps).
A man will spend the next several decades behind bars for killing a Virginia convenience store owner while selling liquor out of the back of his van.
Bruce Hisle, 42, was sentenced on Friday to 38 years in prison for the death of 84-year-old James Robert Carter, the Office of the Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney announced.
The defendant was convicted last summer of felony homicide, second-degree murder, malicious wounding, and multiple gun charges.
On the evening of Dec. 20, 2023, Hisle and his older brother, Dennis Hisle Jr., were selling liquor from their van across the street from the Triple-C convenience store on Lindenwood Avenue in Norfolk, Virginia, a city located mere miles away from the Atlantic Coast. In the front seat of the van sat Tamika Credle, the mother of Bruce Hisle's children.
According to authorities, two men had been speaking with the Hisle brothers from across the street. One of them, "who was drunk, challenged Mr. Hisle as to why he was wearing a long trench coat and insinuated that Mr. Hisle was concealing guns underneath it."
The other man said he could see Bruce Hisle "getting upset," so he crossed the street to try and ease the tensions. He spoke in a "friendly" manner with Dennis Hisle but noticed that Bruce Hisle "who by then had walked toward the front of the van — and his friend were still arguing."
As this witness put it, he felt "that trouble was imminent at that point and that he walked back across the street toward his friend." As he did so, Carter — the convenience store owner — came outside and "told the men outside to move their dispute elsewhere."
They did not.
Gunshots rang out in the air, with one hitting the witness near his rib, and two hitting Carter — one in the torso and one in the face. The shop owner fell inside of his store, with people at the scene saying the bullets came from the front of the van. The aforementioned witness drove himself home and sought medical care, while Carter was brought to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead around 8:30 p.m.
The Hisle brothers got into their van and Credle drove them away, authorities said, with Bruce Hisle placing a 10 mm handgun in the vehicle's glove compartment. One witness followed the van and took down its license plate, reporting it to police and leading to the trio's arrest some 20 minutes later.
"Officers searched the vehicle and found the handgun as well as a box of matching ammunition in the glovebox," the Office of the Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney said. "That ammunition appeared to match 11 spent bullet casings that investigators collected from the scene of the shooting" and a bullet later found in Carter's body during his autopsy "appeared to match the ammunition from the glovebox."
"Subsequent forensic tests confirmed that the 10mm handgun was used in the shooting, that it fired the bullet recovered from Mr. Carter's body, and that the shell casings from the scene were ejected from the same gun," authorities added. The gun was reported stolen from a man who had last seen it when he spent time with Dennis Hisle.
With the Hisle brothers and Credle in jail, court proceedings commenced, and Bruce Hisle pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
Dennis Hisle agreed to a plea agreement after authorities identified Bruce Hisle as the one who had fired the bullets that fateful December 2023 day. The older brother was sentenced to four years in prison with another four years suspended "on the conditions that he complete two years of supervised probation and uniform good behavior following his release."
When he "refused" to testify against his brother during the latter's jury trial, the presiding judge held him in contempt of court and sentenced him to an additional 6 months in jail.
Credle was also called as a witness, but after being sworn in, she invoked the Fifth Amendment, authorities noted. Prosecutors then "introduced a recording of Ms. Credle in a Norfolk Police interview room after her arrest" where she called multiple family members and made statements such as "Bruce shot Mr. Carter" and that he "was shooting just to shoot, and he hit Mr. Carter."
She pleaded not guilty to accessory after the fact of a felony, but she was found guilty and sentenced to 1 year in jail. She appealed the ruling, was found guilty again, and in March 2025, was sentenced to serve 6 months in jail.
Speaking of Bruce Hisle's sentence, Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney Ramin Fatehi said it "offers a measure of closure for the family of Mr. Carter and an appropriate sanction for Mr. Hisle, whose decision to start shooting led to his killing Mr. Carter, a totally innocent bystander who devoted his long life to the community and who was trying to keep the peace."
Fatehi's office noted that Bruce Hisle's sentence "was significantly in excess of the high end of Mr. Hisle's advisory sentencing guidelines, which called for 29 years and 3 months to serve."
Carter was remembered as a beloved member of the community who did not have "a bad bone in his body."
Notes left for the victim at his memorial read: "Thanks for looking out for the kids," and "thanks for always being family," local NBC affiliate WAVY reported.
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