DRUGS ENSNARED MURDER VICTIM

In high school, Stephen William Harrington of Raleigh was the Eagle
Scout who clowned in class, co-captained the swim team and surrounded
himself with friends. In college, little changed. Harrington was
popular and outgoing, rarely alone as he walked across campus. He was
taken with the trails and mountains that surrounded Appalachian State
University in Boone. But Harrington also got caught up in the cocaine
trade, according to documents from Watauga County sheriff's deputies.
Nearly two weeks ago, the 19-year-old accounting major made a
late-night drive to the house of a guy who, some say, owed him money.

The next morning, Harrington's partially burned body was found in the
smoldering trunk of his red Subaru.

Three young men have been charged with first-degree murder in the
Nov. 8 death. The homicide refocused interest on the drug culture
around the college town, and it shocked friends who couldn't figure
out how a personable teenager could become the victim of such a
gruesome crime. For the past week, students have been filing past a
memorial book in the student union, registering messages. The pages
will be sent to Harrington's parents. "He was a really great kid,"
said Don Stanley, an Appalachian State sophomore and one of
Harrington's closest friends. "I don't think he was deep into it. I
think he was in the wrong place at the wrong time." According to
search warrants executed after Harrington's death, sheriff's deputies
found bags with white residue and bags with green vegetable matter in
Harrington's bedroom in an off-campus apartment. They also found two
marijuana plants and learned from his roommate that Harrington was a
social user of pot.

Harrington grew up in Raleigh. As a teenager he lived in a
subdivision near Falls Lake and graduated from Wakefield High School
in 2004. (His parents could not be reached for this report.) At
Wakefield, he thrived socially. The pages of his senior yearbook brim
with snapshots of Harrington: fishing for king mackerel with his dad;
hamming with the swim team; handsome in his official senior
photograph. Under one of the grinning Harrington pictures is a quote
from the fraternity movie "Animal House's" resident partyer: "Over?
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Absolutely not. And
it ain't over now." Harrington was all about having fun, said Brandon
Capley, 18, a freshman at Western Carolina University who swam on
Wakefield's team. He remembers Harrington as the guy who would cut up
in the back of the line before drills and fib about the number of
laps he'd swum.

Last winter, back in Raleigh on college break, Harrington led a group
of friends on a spree snagging dead, curbside Christmas trees, then
piling them in his parents' back yard. The teens lit a huge bonfire,
tossed in some firecrackers and sat around drinking Mountain Dew,
Capley said. This summer, the friends saw each other less regularly.
Both worked as lifeguards, Harrington at North Ridge Country Club.

"He could make friends with just about everybody," Capley said. "Not
everybody knew him, but those who knew him were glad they did."
Stanley, co-captain of the swim team and a childhood friend, was an
Eagle Scout alongside Harrington, then headed west for college. The
pair went skiing together. They went hiking and biking, doing all
they could in the mountains around campus.

Finding his niche Harrington loved college, Stanley said. "He loved
Boone. He loved the people he was around. He felt like it was his
niche. He wouldn't have gone anywhere for anything."

Harrington had no criminal record. Watauga County Sheriff Mark Shook
said Friday that he had never heard of Harrington until the
teenager's death. But sometime last school year, university police
caught Harrington near some kind of drug paraphernalia. He was
referred to the university's judicial agency, said ASU Police Chief
Gunther Doerr.

The university will not say whether any individual student is found
responsible for violating school policy. But anyone found guilty must
go through education and counseling sessions, perform community
service, go on probation and be subjected to drug tests, said Judy
Haas, ASU director of student judicial affairs. A student's parents
also are notified. "This is not just our issue," Haas said. "It's a
national issue." Doerr doesn't think the drug problem at Appalachian
State is any different than other college campuses. Any college
populated with 18- to 22-year-olds, enjoying freedom from parental
oversight, is going to have some drug use, he said. Some students,
though, say the university has a reputation for drug use. "If anybody
goes to App, the first thing people ask you is if you smoke," said
Natalie Bard, 18, a freshman who went to high school with Harrington.
Bard said she learned last year her outgoing friend was dealing
marijuana. "He wasn't open with it," she said. "So it's not like he
was stupid about it." She never suspected cocaine. "Nobody expected
it," Bard said. But some time before his death, Harrington drove to
the Piedmont to pick up a supply of cocaine, according to a search
warrant from the Watauga County sheriff's office.

Deputies were told that Harrington intended to sell the powder to
Neil Matthew Sargent, 24, who wasn't a student but worked security at
the university's arena.

What deputies think happened in the wee hours of Nov. 8 is detailed
in the search warrants from Watauga County. Harrington went to
Sargent's home. Two other men were there as well.

Harrington was attacked. He was restrained with duct tape. His body
was put in the trunk of his 2000 Subaru, driven away and set on fire.
The car was found early that morning near a covered bridge in the
nearby town of Foscoe, smoke curling from behind the back seat. Back
in Harrington's apartment, deputies later found a dry-erase board
showed the words "Total Neil- 3400," according to a search warrant.
It was an apparent reference to a debt.

"The dude owed him money," Stanley said in an interview. Deputies
made three arrests: Sargent; Kyle Quentin Triplett, 21; and Matthew
Brandon Dalrymple, 20. They were charged with first-degree murder.
Hours after Harrington's body was found, deputies showed up at
Sargent's house to ask some questions. All three men were there.
Walking inside, deputies said they detected the sweet odor of freshly
burned pot still hanging in the air.