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Three Killed by Cape Fear River Gunman: What We Know About the Southport Mass Shooting

BY Guy D. McCardle

A gunman came by water and left by water—a drive-by with a propeller that turned Southport’s postcard bar into a battlefield in the time it takes a guitar riff to fade away.

First responders answer the call of "shots fired" at the American Fish Company. Image Credit: StarNews Online

The water carried the gunman in, and the water carried him out. Around 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, September 27, a shooter eased up by boat to the American Fish Company—a beloved open-air bar on Southport, North Carolina’s waterfront—and opened fire on a crowd enjoying a coastal night. Three people were killed. At least eight were wounded. The killer throttled away down the Intracoastal like a hit-and-run driver on a dark liquid highway.

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The Attack: A Maritime Ambush

Witness accounts and police statements align on the bones of the timeline. A small craft nosed along the Cape Fear River by the bar’s deck, shots erupted into the crowd, and the vessel fled toward Oak Island. Roughly thirty minutes later, the U.S. Coast Guard spotted a person loading a boat at a public ramp on Oak Island and detained him, passing the individual to local authorities. Officials emphasized there was no continuing threat to the public that night, though the investigation remains active. Think of it as an ambush from a moving shoreline—hit, vanish, and hope the tide scrubs the trail. Apocalypse Now on the North Carolina coast. 

 

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The Venue: A Local Anchor on the Water

American Fish Company is Southport’s postcard—sunset views, live music, salt air, and a rail of red plastic cups sweating in the humidity. Locals and tourists pack its deck through the warm months for hot bands and cold beers above the tide line. On Saturday, a band had been on the calendar; the normal weekend soundtrack of guitars and conversation was replaced in seconds by gunfire and the chaos that follows it. The bar’s location—right on the water—made this attack different and, for a moment, disorienting. Most bars don’t have a “seaward flank.” This one does.

The Shooter: In Custody, Not Yet Named

As of Sunday, authorities have not publicly released the suspect’s name or any formal charges. They also have not announced a motive. Multiple agencies—including the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, and the Coast Guard—are working the case, interviewing witnesses, processing the boat, and piecing together the shooter’s route. Until investigators talk, motive is fog on the river—plenty of shapes in it, none you can trust.

We have sources that have provided a name. But, again, before law enforcement releases it, we’re holding our cards close to the vest. Once we know for sure, we’ll let you know.

The Victims: Three Dead, Eight Wounded

Police confirmed three fatalities and at least eight injuries in the first hours. Some wounded were hospitalized; their conditions have not been fully disclosed. The number matters, but what lingers is the scene: a casual waterfront night turned into triage on deck boards, bystanders fashioning tourniquets while blue lights stuttered against the pilings. It’s the same American story written in a different font—this time a marina font.

 

How This Fits the Bigger Picture

By widely used research standards, the Southport attack is a mass shooting. The Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a nonpartisan tracker relied on by newsrooms and researchers, defines a mass shooting as four or more people shot, excluding the shooter, at roughly the same time and place. That’s the working rule many outlets use because it counts the full human toll—killed and wounded—rather than fatalities alone.

So, how many mass shootings has the U.S. recorded in 2025? Publicly accessible, regularly updated tallies show 308 incidents through August 31, 2025; September totals haven’t been finalized yet. The Southport attack adds to that ledger. (Monthly reporting lags by design while incidents are verified, which is why September numbers aren’t posted at the time of writing.)

What We Don’t Know—Yet

We don’t know if the shooter had a personal grievance, a fixation, or a spur-of-the-moment rage. We don’t know whether the weapon was legally purchased, borrowed, or stolen. We don’t know if the boat was registered to the suspect or grabbed for the night like a stolen getaway car with a wake. Good investigations move slower than the news cycle; they run like a careful boarding ladder, rung by rung—shell casings to ballistics, camera footage to time stamps, witness statements to phone pings. Authorities say the probe is active and multi-agency; that’s the right posture for a crime that used the river as both cover and escape route.

This is a developing story, and we will bring details to you as they are confirmed.

Why This Hit Hard

Southport is an easygoing harbor town where the most urgent questions on a Saturday night are tide charts and who’s on stage. A gunman attacking from the water flips those assumptions like a skiff in a squall. If a typical bar shooting is a back-alley ambush, this was a drive-by with a propeller—novel in method, familiar in outcome. And that’s the fatigue cutting through the country: different settings, same math.

The Road Ahead

Expect answers to start with the basics—identity, charges, weapon, boat ownership—and then widen to motive and method. If officials confirm pre-planning, you’ll hear about scouting, social media, and purchases. If it was impulse, you’ll hear about opportunity, intoxication, or grievance. Either way, the victims and their families now live on a line of the national spreadsheet we wish didn’t exist.

When the tide comes back in, it will erase footprints on the dock. It won’t erase the holes this senseless shooting left in Southport. 

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