Five shot, one killed at late-night Wake County party near Zebulon

A late-night outdoor party near Zebulon turned deadly Wednesday night, leaving five people shot and one dead after a crowd of hundreds gathered in a Wake County field.

The man killed was identified as 21-year-old Lemonz Feikhem Williams, who was not an North Carolina Central University student. The gathering had been shared on social media as an end-of-semester party for NCCU students, but the university said it had no role in planning or sanctioning the event.

Deputies responded around 10:40 p.m. Wednesday to a shooting at the intersection of Mack Todd Road and West Barbee Street in Zebulon. Several people were injured, one person was killed, and the intersection remained closed as investigators worked the scene.

The shooting pushed a familiar Triangle public-safety problem into sharp relief: a large off-campus party with little supervision can turn chaotic in moments, especially when it is promoted online and draws people from multiple counties. In this case, the crowd was large enough that the event was described as holding hundreds of people in a Wake County field before gunfire broke out.

The immediate question for Wake County and university officials is accountability. The event was not an NCCU-sponsored function, and the school said it had no role in organizing it, but the episode still raises concerns about how quickly a seemingly celebratory gathering can become a homicide scene. For nearby residents, the impact was immediate: a rural intersection was shut down, investigators took over the area, and a night that began as a party ended with one death and multiple wounded.

The case now sits at the intersection of a criminal investigation and a broader warning for eastern Wake County, where large unpermitted gatherings can strain law enforcement, disrupt neighborhoods and expose how little control public institutions sometimes have once an event spreads across social media.