County official blames previous lawyer over arrest warrant, he says not his fault
A member of the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners blamed politics and her former lawyer for a pending arrest warrant, but declined to provide evidence on Thursday showing she completed community service after she was convicted of DWI in 2024.
And her former lawyer no longer represented her and said he’s not to blame.
Yvette Townsend-Ingram said in a statement Thursday that a warrant for her arrest in Gaston County was a “politically motivated attack.”
An arrest warrant from Feb. 5, 2025, said the at-large commissioner failed to complete a community service order that stemmed from the 2024 DWI charge.
Townsend-Ingram said in her statement that she completed alcohol rehabilitation and 24 hours of community service and had proof, but failed to report it to the court system because she could not reach the appropriate person.
“I could never reach the Mecklenburg County representative I was permitted to report to,” she wrote in her statement. “I do have documented evidence of my community service hours.”
“I am not careless, irresponsible or unaccountable as a few would imply.”
Townsend-Ingram declined to answer questions Thursday for this story about what she did to complete community service, if she could provide proof, and why she wasn’t able to report to the court system that she finished her service.
“I’m sorry on the advice of my attorney I can’t do follow-up questions,” she said via text to The Charlotte Observer.
Townsend-Ingram, who unseated longtime commissioner Pat Cotham in 2024, is running for re-election this year. She is going up against nine other candidates in the March Democratic primary. Early voting began Thursday.
“I am confident this offense and attack on me will be resolved, but not likely before the March 3, 2026 Primary Election, which is why I believe this attack has surfaced now after languishing for more than one year,” her press release said.
Townsend-Ingram’s explanations
In her press release, Townsend-Ingram said she completed most of her community service before she was sworn in on Dec. 2, 2024. She was assigned community service after she was charged with a DWI for falling asleep in her car, which she said she left running for air conditioning, with a bottle of wine in Belmont.
Townsend-Ingram previously said she was struggling with the death of her brother and being laid off from her job at the time. In her Thursday press release, Townsend-Ingram said she was also struggling with the death of six family members, including her mother. She said she pleaded guilty to the DWI on the advice of her attorney.
Townsend-Ingram said Thursday she has hired a new lawyer to help her with the February 2025 arrest warrant after she said she did not receive information about it from her previous lawyer, Nicholas Street, or Gaston County law enforcement.
Street, however, was no longer representing her.
Townsend-Ingram was assigned community service at a court hearing in October 2024. Street represented her at that hearing and said in a phone call Thursday that the pair never had contact again after the hearing. He wasn’t her attorney anymore after the case ended, he wasn’t aware of the February 2025 warrant, and he wouldn’t have been responsible for letting her know about it if he was, he said.
The at-large commissioner would have found out at some point that she hadn’t done what the court ordered, the attorney said.
Who was supposed to serve the warrant?
While the warrant was issued in Gaston County, a warrant tracking assignment system showed it was assigned to the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office for service.
Gaston County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Capt. Jason Davis emailed a screenshot of the system’s history to The Charlotte Observer Wednesday. It showed that the Gaston County Sheriff’s Office assigned the warrant to the Mecklenburg sheriff on Feb. 5, 2025.
Davis said the warrant uploaded to the statewide EWarrants system, where they’re uploaded and assigned to responsible agencies.
“Every agency that serves warrants would have their own internal process of reviewing the warrants ... and decide how they’re going to implement a process to have those served,” Davis said.
Mecklenburg sheriff’s spokesperson Sarah Mastouri said in an email Thursday that deputies received “zero communication” from Gaston County about the warrant. And the warrant tracking assignment history in the Gaston system didn’t have a specific division or name, she said.
“At this point, the request could have gone anywhere within MCSO, CMPD, or any of the municipal police departments,” Mastouri said.
She did not respond to a follow-up question about how often another county attempts to transfer an arrest warrant to Mecklenburg, but the Mecklenburg sheriff has no record of it.
Davis said a department wouldn’t typically alert another about a warrant unless it were for a serious crime. Once the warrant for Townsend-Ingram was uploaded to the system, it became the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office’s responsibility to serve it since it was in their jurisdiction, he said.
This story was originally published February 12, 2026 at 2:06 PM.
