TD Gribble last saw his parents on Thursday, after a trip to his family’s hometown of Jacksonville, North Carolina.
Everyone he had seen there – the jeweler, his former karate instructor – told him to give his mother and father a hug, he said. After returning home to Greenville, that’s exactly what he did, hugging his mom and giving his dad a kiss on the forehead.
“The next time I saw them was Friday afternoon around 2 p.m., after they were murdered,” Gribble, 51, said by phone Tuesday.
After arriving at his parents’ house, Gribble restrained suspected shooter — a real estate broker accused of carrying out a series of shootings in Greenville last week, including three fatalities — at gunpoint until authorities arrived, Pitt County Sheriff Paula said Monday Dance.
David Lever, 55, was charged with three counts of murder for the killings Friday of Anthony “Tony” Gribble, 80; Paula Gribble, 76; and Enrique Reyes, 64, according to the sheriff’s office.
Authorities have not revealed a possible motive.
Lever, who is being held without bail, was appointed a public defender facing the death penalty during his first court appearance Monday, NBC affiliate WITN in Greenville reported.
Dance said Paula Gribble summoned her son to their home Friday afternoon. In an interview Tuesday, she declined to say why, citing an ongoing investigation.
When TD Gribble found his mortally wounded parents and confronted Lever, he never drew his gun, but he kept his hand on his holster and ordered Lever to put his hands in the air while he called the 911, his wife, Dana Gribble, told NBC. News.
“He kept his cool and begged the dispatcher to send a sheriff with lights and sirens,” said Dana Gribble, 51. “He said, ‘Please send them quickly.'”
After deputies arrived, Dance said, Lever was quickly taken into custody.
Tony Gribble, a Marine Corps veteran, and Paula Gribble, a retired nurse, were found dead, the sheriff’s office said.
Reyes, a retired biology professor from East Carolina University, was also found dead. He had been fatally shot in the driveway of his home, Dance said.
In two other shootings, Lever is accused of opening fire at a gas station and a home in his neighborhood, Dance said. No one was hurt.
After Lever’s arrest, authorities discovered a cache of guns and ammunition at his home and in the van he drove between the four scenes, Dance said.
Search warrants obtained Tuesday by WITN allege that Lever confessed to TD Gribble, telling him at their home Friday that he had killed his parents.
TD and Dana Gribble declined to discuss most details of the confrontation and killings, as well as a possible connection between their family and Lever. But warrants show Lever worked as a real estate agent for the elder Gribbles after they moved to Greenville, WITN reported.
State records show Lever got his license in 2004 and was a broker-in-charge at a Greenville real estate company. As of Tuesday, his license remained active.
Efforts to reach anyone at the company for comment Tuesday were unsuccessful.
Dana Gribble remembers her mother-in-law as a Florence Nightingale-type nurse — “a caregiver through and through” who rose from nursing instructor to division president during the nearly four decades she worked at Coastal Carolina Community College.
“Countless people, in the healthcare field and beyond, have benefited from Paula’s influence,” the school’s president said in a statement. “His commitment to his profession, his academic community and certainly his students was, in my opinion, unparalleled.”
Tony Gribble had been part of a Marine Corps force reconnaissance unit and served seven missions in Vietnam, Dana Gribble said. He received several honors, including a Bronze Star for valor in combat and several Purple Hearts.
After a series of injuries, TD Gribble said, his father had become frail in old age.
But, he remembers of his parents, “they were exceptional people”.
“They were committed to their family. They were committed to their profession. They were committed to their church.”
Reyes retired in 2022 after 17 years as a biology professor at East Carolina University, a school spokesperson said. He lived on the same street as Lever — and less than half a mile away — although Dance said there was no known relationship between them.
He was found dead after returning from a local grocery store, Dance said.
His colleagues at ECU remember him as someone who made them feel like family, hosting sushi eating competitions and taking them to new restaurants around Greenville, Michael Brewer, whom Reyes mentored, told WITN.
David Chalcraft, chair of the university’s biology department, told the station: “He was living the life he wanted. It’s so sad.”
