The list of shootings in Guilford County – and the list of people dying from gunshot wounds – increased by one on Wednesday, July 28, when a McLeansville man was found shot and a suspect was arrested and incarcerated.

On Thursday, July 29, the Guilford County Sheriff’s Department reported that, one day earlier, at 6:57 p.m., department deputies responded to a shooting at the 3400 block of Anderson Valley Road in McLeansville.

Upon arriving, the officers found the victim – Kelly Cox – suffering from apparent gunshot wounds.  

According to a report from the Sheriff’s Department, Cox was deceased by the time EMS arrived on the scene. 

The department also announced that a suspect is now in custody.  Frederick Cornelius was arrested and charged.  He’s facing first degree murder charges and is being held with no bond in the county’s jail in downtown Greensboro.

The shooting comes at a time when Guilford County, and the cities of Greensboro and High Point, have been focusing on ways to reduce gun violence and gun deaths in the community.  All three local governments in recent years have discussed ways to quell the violence but it remains a problem. New homicide statistics show a drop in homicides for 2021 compared to 2021, however, gun violence remains a big issue in the county.

In this new case, the weapon was allegedly a shotgun, however in some cases very high-powered rifles are the weapon.  Earlier this year when there was a shooting from a vehicle in Irving Park in Greensboro, one eyewitness said she thought a transformer had exploded due to the horrific noise and the light flashes that filled the air.

While the McLeansville shooting on Wednesday appears to be intentional, Guilford County government is also in the midst of addressing accidental shootings. 

Alarmed by an incident this year at Sedgefield Country Club in which an outdoor diner was struck by a stray bullet, the Guilford County commissioners are holding a public hearing in early August on potential changes to the county’s gun ordinances for the first time since the mid-1980s,

The county has also discussed at length ways intentional shootings could be mitigated, but, as of yet, has taken no concrete action in that regard.