Lizard Lick Towing owner and star of the TruTV reality show based on the business, Ron Shirley, confirmed his son was killed in a shooting at a Sheetz gas station in North Carolina. Shirley confirmed the terrible news on Facebook and shared kind words with fans.
“He’s at peace now – waiting on the rest of us to arrive at those gates- we will be there soon Big Shur – and will always cherish the times we had while you were with us son,” Ron Shirley wrote on Facebook along with a news story on the incident. According to WRAL, the shooting came at an event honoring a community member killed in a car crash in the week before the tragic shooting.
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Deputies responded to the shooting at 8 p.m. local time, occurring in the front yard at the event, with several men jumping into a vehicle after and driving away. This shooting was found to be connected to later shooting at a Sheetz gas station a few miles from the first incident.
“We ask at this time for your prayers and for your respect of the privacy of the family. The investigation is ongoing and several suspects are being sought. Ron and Amy will be making a post in a few days with details they wish to share,” a post Friday noted on the Lizard Lick Towing page. “Please know that their faith in God is what is carrying them through this horrible situation and they want everyone to know Alex aka Big Shur is in the presence of God now, and the family will always cherish every memory they made with him and never forget the joy he brought into the lives of everyone he met.”
Harley Alexander Shirley, 21, was pronounced dead at the scene while an unnamed 20-year-old woman was transported to the hospital with serious injuries. A third person in the vehicle was uninjured. “I had left before it happened, but it was right after the balloon release, people were leaving,” Xavier Smith’s mother wrote in a statement to WRAL News. “The service was peaceful, I don’t know what happened.”
A motive of the shooting is unknown at the time of publication, though there are suspects authorities are looking out for at the moment. Shirley pronounced dead at the scene of the shooting.
Lizard Lick Towing appeared on truTV from 2011 until 2014, as a spin-off from the series All Worked Up and ran for four seasons on the network. Shirley started his towing company in 1998 with a single truck, expanding it to 20 trucks and 15 staff members across a decade. According to the wiki for the show, Ron and Amy initially got a taste of reality TV with a potential Wife Swap appearance.
