A grand jury has charged a North Carolina State Highway Patrol sergeant with first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of a Cumberland County sheriff's captain, a killing investigators say grew out of years of jealousy over a woman both officers had dated.
Sgt. Nekime Matu Oxendine, 44, was indicted Tuesday on a single count of first-degree murder for the March 27 shooting death of Capt. Adam Bean outside a home in Hope Mills, a small town in Cumberland County, North Carolina. A judge ordered Oxendine held without bond. He remains on administrative leave from the state highway patrol.
Bean, a 42-year-old officer with nearly two decades of service, was found lying on his back in the front yard after being struck by several rounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene. A woman named Tara Lynn Whitman, who had dated both men, was performing CPR on Bean when police arrived. Oxendine remained nearby.
Court filings from state investigators paint a picture of escalating tension stretching back years. Oxendine had shown what investigators described as persistent jealousy and insecurity over Whitman's connection with Bean. The dispute was not a sudden eruption. It had been building since at least 2022, the New York Post reported, with text messages showing Oxendine repeatedly accusing Whitman of maintaining a relationship with Bean and making threatening statements.
Text messages reveal threats dating back to 2022
Search warrants obtained by WTVD, the ABC affiliate in the Raleigh, Durham area, laid out the sequence of events. A witness, an unnamed Cumberland County Sheriff's Office employee, told investigators that Bean arrived at Whitman's home that night and became upset after seeing Oxendine's truck parked there. Oxendine then came out of the house carrying a gun and fired one shot into the ground before allegedly opening fire again, striking Bean multiple times.
Bean had sent a message to Whitman that evening. Fox News reported that Bean texted, "F--- it, I'll come to you." He drove to the home. What followed ended his life.
The threatening language from Oxendine was not new. In a July 2022 text message to Whitman, Oxendine wrote: "I see u have been talking to Adam!!! Best Wishes!!! Better tell that motherf***** to get ready too!!!" That message, preserved in search warrants, suggests the hostility toward Bean had festered for years before it turned lethal.
Cases in which one law enforcement officer kills another are highly uncommon. Research from the Harvard Kennedy School's Wiener Center found that when such incidents do occur, they are most often linked to inadvertent friendly fire or mistaken identity, not personal vendettas. This case fits no accidental pattern. Investigators described a deliberate act rooted in a years-long romantic rivalry.
Bean served Cumberland County for 20 years and leaves behind a son
Adam Bean spent two decades with the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office. The day after the indictment, the sheriff's office honored him posthumously with a merit award and published a tribute on Facebook.
The office wrote that Bean's "efforts helped strengthen the agency's ability to recruit, retain, and support highly qualified personnel while contributing directly to the continued effectiveness of public safety operations throughout Cumberland." The post added that "his legacy continues through the many contributions he made to this agency and the people he served."
Bean is survived by a son, his parents, and two siblings. He was 42 years old. His career in law enforcement was the kind of steady, unglamorous public service that rarely makes national headlines, until it ends in a front yard in a small North Carolina town.
The case adds to a troubling pattern of law enforcement officials facing serious criminal charges. In New York, a deputy police commissioner in Mount Vernon was charged as a getaway driver in his own son's gang shooting, another case of a senior officer allegedly crossing to the wrong side of the law.
Highway patrol calls the case 'a difficult and tragic event'
The North Carolina State Highway Patrol issued a measured statement in response to the indictment. "The Patrol respects the integrity of the judicial process and our system of laws that we all hold dear," the agency told WRAL. "This is a difficult and tragic event for all involved."
Oxendine has not entered a plea, and no statement from a defense attorney appeared in available reporting. He remains on administrative leave, a standard procedural step, but one that has now stretched for months since the March shooting.
Several details remain unresolved. The exact number of rounds that struck Bean has not been disclosed publicly. The information provided refers to Oxendine as both a "trooper" and a "sergeant," and no clarification of his current rank has been provided. Whether additional charges could follow is also unclear.
Accountability failures within law enforcement have drawn increasing scrutiny in recent years. In New Jersey, a grand jury indicted a police sergeant who left a double-murder scene to get pizza. In Seattle, a police chief was forced out after a deadly shooting exposed communication breakdowns. Each case is different in its facts, but the thread is the same: the public expects officers to uphold the law, not break it.
Bean's family now waits for the judicial process to play out. A 20-year career in law enforcement ended in a front yard. A fellow officer stands accused of pulling the trigger. And the motive, investigators say, was not a split-second misjudgment in the line of duty, it was jealousy that had been building for years.
The badge is supposed to mean something. When the person wearing it is the one who allegedly commits the crime, the damage runs deeper than one life lost, it corrodes the trust that every officer in the county depends on.
