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CARTHAGE (AP) — A prosecutor said Thursday she will seek the death penalty against a man accused of killing eight people during a shooting rampage at a nursing home in central North Carolina.

Moore County District Attorney Maureen Krueger made the statement at a brief hearing in Moore County Superior Court for Robert Kenneth Stewart, 45.

About 50 relatives of the victims at Pinelake Health and Rehabilitation Center in Carthage attended the hearing for their first glimpse of Stewart.

Court officials set boxes of tissues on the wooden benches assigned to the families and some cried silently when Stewart, wearing an orange striped jumpsuit, was escorted into the courtroom.

Stewart made no statement. More than a dozen armed officers were posted in the courtroom and spectators were checked twice with metal detectors.

"We contend there are sufficient aggravating factors" to seek the death penalty, Krueger told Superior Court Judge Cressie Thigpen Jr.

After court, the fiance of one victim said Stewart was an evil presence.

"There's not enough punishment he could receive on the earth that could justify what he took," said Jill DeGarmo, who worked at the nursing home as a medical technician and was engaged to marry nurse Jerry Avant, 39. "He's not crazy. He's pure evil, a man without a conscience."

Krueger also asked the judge to order that a bullet still in Stewart's body be preserved as evidence if it is removed. The bullet was fired by Carthage police officer Justin Garner, who went into the nursing home alone the morning of March 29 and shot Stewart in his chest. The officer was wounded by shotgun pellets in his leg.

Defense attorney Jonathan Megerian said he didn't object to preserving the bullet, but didn't want it removed unless it was medically necessary.

Stewart is charged with eight counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder of an officer, assault with a deadly weapon and assault on a law enforcement officer.

Those who died were Avant; Bessie Elizabeth Hedrick, 78; Tessie Garner, 75; Lillian Dunn, 89; Jesse Musser, 88; John Goldston, 78; Margaret Johnson, 89, and Louise DeKler, 98.