Stories Related to North Carolina Neighbors Remember Accused Gunman

BLACK MOUNTAIN, N.C. — To neighbors, it looked like a “moonshine shack,” a little yellow wooden hut with overgrown weeds and no indoor plumbing, banged together by its owner, Robert Lewis Dear Jr. And whenever Dear came to stay in his shack in the woods, the neighbors in Anderson Acres, a community of about seven houses along a steep, gravel road here, kept their kids inside. “He was the kind of person you had to watch out for,” said one neighbor who asked not to be identified, saying he feared retaliation from Dear or his family. “He was a very weird individual.