Charlotte man sought in wife’s fatal shooting found in cemetery, NC sheriff says

A Charlotte man first identified as a “person of interest” in the fatal shooting of his wife has been arrested and charged with murder, authorities in Iredell County said Monday.

On Feb. 19, sheriff’s deputies found Lailani Nicole Givens, 34, fatally shot in a vehicle in the 400 block of Rocky River Road near Mooresville. Deputies then launched a search for her husband, 30-year-old Arthur Lee Givens V, according to the Iredell County Sheriff’s Office.

The U.S. Marshals Service, acting on information from investigators, located and arrested Givens in Oaklawn Cemetery just north of uptown Charlotte on Saturday, the Sheriff’s Office said in a news release Monday. Givens was returned to Iredell County.

The investigation led sheriff’s detectives to secure a felony arrest warrant against Givens for murder.

Givens also has outstanding warrants from August 2019 for assault by strangulation, second-degree kidnapping, breaking and entering to terrorize or injure and assault on a female, according to Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office records.

The outstanding warrants are not directly related to Lailani Givens’ shooting, Iredell sheriff’s spokesman William Hamby told the Observer last week.

Officials have not said what led to the shooting.