Roger Glenn Self, 63, was arrested on Sunday in Bessemer City, North Carolina
A father has been arrested after police say he intentionally rammed his car into a restaurant where his family was seated, killing his sheriff’s deputy daughter and one other family member.
Driver Roger Glenn Self, 63, was arrested shortly after noon on Sunday amid the carnage at the Surf and Turf Lounge in Bessemer City, North Carolina, on the outskirts of Charlotte.
Two were killed, including the driver’s daughter, 26-year-old Corporal Katelyn Self of the Gaston County Sheriff’s Office. The other fatality has not yet been publicly identified but is also reportedly a family member.
Witnesses at the restaurant said that Self brought his family into the restaurant around noon and had them seated, and then returned to his car, the Gaston Gazette reported.
Self’s daughter, 26-year-old Corporal Katelyn Self (above) of the Gaston County Sheriff’s Office was killed when he rammed his car into the restaurant where they were eating
Katelyn and her father Roger Self are seen together at a Duke football game in 2013
Witnesses said Self rammed his white SUV through the wall of the restaurant (pictured) at high speed. Paramedics rushed to the scene but two people died
Roger Self then drove his white SUV through the wall of the restaurant at a high rate of speed, smashing through the dining room where the family was sitting, witnesses said.
‘I was about to go check on my tables in the back, next thing I know I saw a white Jeep fly right past my face,’ waiter Brandon Wilson told the local paper. ‘I saw tables, chairs, cups everything flying. It was really loud.’
Local police responded to the call at 12.05pm, and called in paramedics to rush the wounded for care.
It is unclear how many were injured in the event, but multiple patients were transported by LifeFlight to the Level One trauma center at Carolinas Medical Center, police said.
Self was immediately arrested at the scene. ‘He drove his car into the building, killing people, so that’s why we took him into custody immediately,’ Bessemer City Police Chief Thomas Ellis Jr. said at a televised press conference.
Paramedics are seen evacuating the wounded from the back of the restaurant
The car appeared to smash all the way through the dining room, damaging the back wall
Photos from the scene show a gaping hole in the wall of the restaurant at the top of a wide walkway ramp leading to the entrance. The car appears to have gone all the way across the dining room and smashed partly through the restaurant’s back wall.
Katelyn Self was a four-year veteran of the Gaston County Sheriff’s Office, Sheriff Alan Cloninger said at the press conference. She started as a jailer and worked her way up to deputy, he said.
‘We’re suffering a little bit right now,’ he said, choking up as he spoke.
Officials said Roger Self is a private investigator who used to work for Gastonia Police Department years ago.
A 2017 profile in the Gazette said Roger Self, who lives nearby in Dallas, North Carolina, ran a private investigations business called Southeastern Loss Management.
It said the business opened in 1989 and mostly helped companies investigate employees’ wrongdoing.