A few days ago 3 friends: Nikki-Cherilyn Adams, John McClickland, and Lily Tompson went camping up in North Carolina’s secluded campground, Deep Creek.  The day of April 9, 2004, the 3 went tubing early that morning and planned to going hiking up to this small pond, about a mile away, later in the evening.  They all got up to the pond around 7:45 that night. Nikki-Cherilyn told me that a small family of turtles had gathered on the “shore” of the pond.  John walked back a couple of feet to see the pond from a distance, while Nikki and Lily stood on the bridge above the pond looking down and watching carefully at the turtle family.  A few minutes later McClickland comes back from where he had gone and stood on the bridge with the two girls.  He then pulls out a Magnum that he had hidden somewhere on him.  “He just pulled out this gun out of nowhere.  Nikki and I had no idea where he had gotten it and began to slowly back away from him,” Tompson expresses to me.  McClickland then tells Adams and Tompson that the gun was not to be used on the two of them.  “Relieved, we went back over to see what the gun was for,” says Nikki.  He then pointed the Magnum down towards the family of turtles and let out three shots.  Two turtles died instantly and the other died only a couple hours later from a massive injury.  Only two turtles from the family survived this uncalled act of violence.