It has been revealed that the combat veteran accused of shooting up a busy North Carolina venue from his boat, claiming the lives of three people and injuring eight more, attended a music awards ceremony with American Idol’s star Kellie Pickler.
The attack took place on Saturday night, September 27, around 9.30 pm when Nigel Edge, 39, drew close to the American Fish Company dockside diner and opened fire.
Police then spotted him loading his vessel five miles from the scene and sicced the coast guard on him, resulting in Edge’s arrest.
A deep dive into his affairs has since revealed that he has instigated a litany of lawsuits, including one against Pickler, whom he accused of trying to poison him on the same night of their CMT date in 2012.
Nigel Edge, then known as Sean DeBevoise, attended a music awards ceremony with the Idols star
According to court documents obtained by TMZ, Edge sued Pickler in February 2024 for spiking his drink with a noxious substance at the star-studded event more than a decade ago.
The court filing shows the two at the event, which he refers to as the “CMA awards,” and claims that the American Idol passed Edge a poisoned glass of Jim Beam whisky.
He claims in the filing that he is only alive today because he did not drink from it.
Court filings also reveal that the shooter did not always go by Nigel Edge; in 2023, he changed his name from Sean DeBevoise, the handle by which he was known when he appeared alongside Pickler.
At the time, DeBevoise thought Pickler was an Angel
Around the time things appeared to be going swimmingly, even by the now-incarcerated military man’s standards.
🚨🇺🇸 DEADLY BOAT SHOOTING ROCKS SOUTHPORT MARINA: 11 VICTIMS CONFIRMED
Southport, NC was shattered Saturday night after a gunman opened fire from a white center-console boat at American Fish Company in the Yacht Basin, leaving 11 people shot.
🔹 The attacker fled up the… pic.twitter.com/sAV6A1lUv0
— Info Room (@InfoR00M) September 28, 2025
Taste of Country, observed Pickler tweeted, apprising her fans of her date for the night, and reported then-DeBevoise praising her.
“I am ecstatic about being here at the CMT Music Awards with Kellie,” he gushed. “Even more to consider her a friend. She is the most sincere person I know. She is an angel.”
Pickler had met DeBevoise at a fundraiser in North Carolina, and he invited her to a Hope For Our Heroes, Got Heart, Give Hope Gala, which she declined due to her schedule.
Kellie Pickler, at the time, professed to being a big fan of the troops
She made it up to him by inviting him to CMT and later explained that she was a fan of the troops because “It takes a very special person to sacrifice everything.”
“When I say ‘everything,’ I don’t mean just their time, I mean their life. Everything!” she emphasized.
“Their family, their kids, their loved ones. You sacrifice everything to put your life on the line for us, and it’s such a great, honorable, heroic thing … We have to raise our glass to them and keep them all in our prayers and always say thank you.”
The country news outlet touched on his combat experience, reporting that the Edge, a
“Wilmington, N.C. native, was a part of two separate IED attacks, in addition to a separate incident in which a bullet shrapnel lodged in his head. He suffered nerve damage after the AK-47 peppered his body.”
The Marine believed that he was being hounded by “LGBTQ white supremacists” for being a “straight male”
Recent accounts indicate that Edge had PTSD and had been mid-episode when he was arrested for the dockside restaurant shooting.
Numerous lawsuits against “LGBTQ white supremacists” whom he alleges have been plotting against him because he was a “straight male” have also been discovered.
In these lawsuits, which have since been thrown out, Southport’s Generations and the Church Brunswick Medical Center were accused of conspiring to slay him.
He is also the author of a book, Headshot: Betrayal of a Nation, in which he details injuries sustained in Iraq and claims that they were also part of a plot to take his life.
Netizens hare seeing a pattern in: Two mass shootings by veterans in two days
